A Web graphic opposing the ‘New World Order.’ [Source: Human Symbiose (.org)]In a speech discussing the post-Cold War world, President Bush outlines his vision of a “New World Order.” Bush says: “We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.” The Southern Poverty Law Center will later write that many people, particularly white supremacists and separatists, take Bush’s phrase “as a slip of the tongue revealing secret plans to create a one-world government.” [Sweet Liberty, 9/11/1990; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001] In 1995, Michigan gun dealer and right-wing activist Frank Kieltyka will describe the “New World Order” to a Buffalo News reporter. According to Kieltyka, the “New World Order” is backed by the US government and led by, among other organizations, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “We’re moving towards the Communists,” Kieltyka will warn. The belief in this “New World Order” will be emphasized in coming years in the militia movements and by right-wing publications such as The Spotlight, an openly racist, anti-government newsletter. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 157-158]

The “Aryan Republican Army” (ARA) commits at least 22 bank robberies across America’s Midwest. The ARA is modeled after the violent white supremacist organization The Order (see Late September 1983), which had funded itself primarily through robbing armored trucks. For a time, the group’s headquarters is in Elohim City, Oklahoma (see 1973 and After). The ARA’s leaders claim to be dedicated to the “overthrow of the US government, the extermination of American Jews, and the establishment of an Aryan Republic” on the North American continent. Members are required to read the infamous Turner Diaries (see 1978), a novel depicting the overthrow of the US government by white separatists and the genocide of minorities. The robberies in all secure between $250,000 and $500,000 for the group. Robbery Spree - During the height of their robbery spree, ARA members target a bank about once a month, hitting banks and financial institutions in Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, and Kentucky. Sometimes the robbers dress like construction workers and flee in junk cars bought specifically for the escape. Sometimes they leave fake bombs and smoke grenades to delay pursuit; sometimes they speak in foreign languages to confuse authorities. In a December 1994 heist, one robber wears a Santa Claus suit, shouts “Ho, ho, ho!” to customers, and leaves a bomb tucked in a Santa hat. During a March 1995 robbery, the robbers leave a pipe bomb in an Easter basket. On one occasion the robbers leave a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the ashtray of an abandoned getaway car. Sometimes they wear caps or bandannas bearing the logos of the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). On another occasion the robbers buy a getaway car, a Ford Fairlane, in the name of a retired FBI agent who had worked white supremacist cases in the Northwest; on the front seat of this car they leave an article about Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). When FBI agent Jim Nelson takes his speculations about the ARA public, group members send letters to several Midwestern newspapers mocking him and calling themselves the “Mid-Western Bank Bandits.” Arrests and Convictions - By late 1995, federal and state authorities will arrest most ARA members; ARA leader Peter Kevin Langan will be convicted on multiple charges of bank robbery, and another ARA leader, Richard Guthrie, will commit suicide in prison after cooperating with authorities. Michael William Brescia and Kevin William McCarthy also cooperate with authorities in return for reduced sentences. Others convicted include Mark William Thomas and Scott Stedeford. Promotional Video Gives Principles - In a two-hour promotional video made in January 1995 and called “The Armed Struggle Underground,” Langan, calling himself “Commander Pedro,” appears in a ski mask alongside others in fatigues brandishing weapons and fistfuls of cash. In the video, Langan says: “Our basic goal is to set up an Aryan republic.… Don’t mistake us for cultists. We, ladies and gentlemen, are your neighbors.” Langan also says the ARA supports “ethnic cleansing” similar to what the Serbians are carrying out in Kosovo. Another ARA member tells viewers that ARA intends to declare war on the American government and promises a “courthouse massacre.” In the video, ARA members state their principles: all racial minorities are subhuman, Jews are “Satan’s spawn,” whites of northern European descent are “chosen people,” and a United Nations-led “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) threatens freedom in the United States. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/4/1997; Anti-Defamation League, 8/9/2002; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003; New American, 11/28/2005]Oklahoma City Bomber a Member - In 2001, the FBI will state that McVeigh was an ARA member. It is possible that money “laundered” by him shortly before the bombing (see November 1994) came from an ARA bank robbery. [Nicole Nichols, 2003]

Combat engineering vehicles (CEVs) lined up outside the blazing Branch Davidian compound. [Source: PBS]The FBI and local law enforcement officials begin their planned assault on the besieged Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993, March 1, 1993, and April 17-18, 1993), despite indications that the Davidians inside the compound will retaliate either by firing on the gathered law enforcement officials, by torching the main residential building, or perhaps both (see April 18, 1993). [PBS Frontline, 10/1995]Warning - At 5:55 a.m., Richard Rogers, the commander of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), orders two combat engineering vehicles (CEVs, unarmed modifications of Bradley fighting vehicles and the primary means for deplying CS “riot control agent” into the main building) deployed to the main building. One minute later, senior negotiator Byron Sage telephones the residence and speaks with Davidian Steve Schneider. At 5:59, Schneider comes to the phone. Sage tells him: “We are in the process of putting tear gas into the building. This is not an assault. We will not enter the building.” Schneider replies, “You are going to spray tear gas into the building?” Sage says, “In the building… no, we are not entering the building.” At the conclusion of the conversation, Schneider or another Davidian throws the telephone out of the building. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] Minutes later, Schneider slips out, retrieves the phone, and ducks back inside. [Time, 5/3/1993]Combat Vehicles Begin Deploying Gas, Davidians Open Fire - At 6:02 a.m., the two CEVs begin inserting CS gas into the compound, using spray nozzles attached to booms. The booms punch holes through the exterior walls of the building. The FBI uses unarmed Bradley Fighting Vehicles to deploy “ferret rounds,” military ammunition designed to release CS after penetrating a barricade such as a wall or window. As the CEVs and the Bradleys punch holes into the buildings for the deployment of the gas, Sage makes the following statement over the loudspeakers: “We are in the process of placing tear gas into the building. This is not an assault. We are not entering the building. This is not an assault. Do not fire your weapons. If you fire, fire will be returned. Do not shoot. This is not an assault. The gas you smell is a non-lethal tear gas. This gas will temporarily render the building uninhabitable. Exit the residence now and follow instructions. You are not to have anyone in the tower. The [guard] tower is off limits. No one is to be in the tower. Anyone observed to be in the tower will be considered to be an act of aggression [sic] and will be dealt with accordingly. If you come out now, you will not be harmed. Follow all instructions. Come out with your hands up. Carry nothing. Come out of the building and walk up the driveway toward the Double-E Ranch Road. Walk toward the large Red Cross flag. Follow all instructions of the FBI agents in the Bradleys. Follow all instructions. You are under arrest. This standoff is over. We do not want to hurt anyone. Follow all instructions. This is not an assault. Do not fire any weapons. We do not want anyone hurt. Gas will continue to be delivered until everyone is out of the building.” Two minutes later, Davidians begin firing on the vehicles from the windows. The gunfire from the Davidians prompts Rogers and FBI commander Jeffrey Jamar to decide to change tactics; at 6:07 a.m., the assault forces begin deploying all of the gas at once instead of dispersing it in a controlled manner over the course of 48-72 hours as originally envisioned. [Dean M. Kelley, 5/1995; PBS Frontline, 10/1995; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996; USMC Weapons, 2002] (Jamar will later testify that before the assault even began, he was “99 percent certain” that the FBI would have to escalate its assault because the Davidians would open fire.) [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] As a CEV demolishes the back wall of the gymnasium area of the compound, negotiators broadcast: “David, we are facilitating you leaving the compound by enlarging the door.… Leave the building now.” [Cox News Service, 1/30/2000] Jamar will later explain that the Bradleys do not carry military weaponry. “Of course we had all the firepower removed,” he will say in a 1995 interview. “There were no cannons or anything on them. We used them for transportation. And they’re more than a personnel carrier—they’re a track vehicle. I mean it’s mud, just thick mud there the whole time. And the agents learned how to drive ‘em. But the idea was to protect them as best we could. And we didn’t know—they talked about blowing a 50—did they have rockets? Who knows? Did they have explosives buried in various vicinities? Are they prepared to run out with Molatov cocktails? What’s in their mind?” Jamar is referring to threats made by Koresh and other Davidians to blow up FBI vehicles. As for the CEVs, they are tanks modified for construction and engineering purposes, and are often used as bulldozers. Observers watching the events live on television or later on videotape will sometimes mistake the CEVs for actual tanks, though two M1A1 Abrams tanks are actually on site and take part in the assault. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995; PBS Frontline, 10/1995]House Report: Davidians Would Certainly Consider FBI's Actions an Assault - A 1996 report by a House of Representatives investigative committee (see August 2, 1996) will note that it is almost impossible for the Davidians not to consider themselves under assault, with tank-like vehicles tearing holes in the building, CS being sprayed everywhere, grenade-like projectiles crashing through windows, men in body armor swarming around the compound, and the sounds of what seems like combat all around them. “Most people would consider this to be an attack on them—an ‘assault’ in the simplest terms,” the report will find. “If they then saw other military vehicles approaching, from which projectiles were fired through the windows of their home, most people are even more likely to believe that they were under an assault. If those vehicles then began to tear down their home there would be little doubt that they were being attacked. These events are what the Davidians inside the residence experienced on April 19, yet the FBI did not consider their actions an assault.” Moreover, the FBI did not consider the close-knit, home-centered community the Davidians have long since formed. “Their religious leader led them to believe that one day a group of outsiders, non-believers, most likely in the form of government agents, would come for them,” the report will state. “Indeed, they believed that this destiny had been predicted 2,000 years before in Biblical prophecy. Given this mindset, it can hardly be disputed that the Davidians thought they were under assault at 6 a.m. on April 19.” [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]Monitoring from Washington - At 7:00 a.m., Attorney General Janet Reno and senior Justice Department and FBI officials go to the FBI situation room to monitor the assault. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995]Buildings Breached - At 7:30 a.m., a CEV breaches the side of one of the main buildings and injects large amounts of tear gas into the interior of the compound. At 7:58 a.m., gas is fired into the second floor of the back-right corner of the building. The FBI asks for more ferret rounds, and by 9:30 a.m., 48 more ferret rounds arrive from Houston. The assault is hampered by the FBI’s dwindling supply of ferret rounds, a CEV with mechanical difficulties, and high winds dispersing the gas. Another CEV enlarges the opening in the center-front of the building, with the idea of providing an escape route for the trapped Davidians. A third CEV breaches the rear of the building, according to a later Justice Department report, “to create openings near the gymnasium.” [PBS Frontline, 10/1995]Clinton Told Assault Progressing Well - At about 11 a.m., Reno briefs President Clinton, tells him that the assault seems to be going well, and leaves for a judicial conference in Baltimore. During this time, a CEV breaches the back side of the compound. At 11:40 a.m., the FBI fires the last of the ferret rounds into the building. At 11:45 a.m., one wall of the compound collapses. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995]Transcriptionist Escapes - Ruth Riddle, the typist and transcriptionist sent inside the compound by the FBI to help Koresh finish his “Seven Seals” manuscript (see April 18, 1993), escapes the compound before the fire. She brings out a computer disk containing the unfinished manuscript. [Dean M. Kelley, 5/1995]Davidians Set Fires throughout Compound - At 12:07 p.m., according to the Justice Department and House reports, the Davidians start “simultaneous fires at three or more different locations within the compound.” An FBI Hostage Rescue Team member reports seeing “a male starting a fire” in the front of the building. Later analyses show that the first fire begins in a second-floor bedroom, the second in the first floor dining room, and the third in the first floor chapel. Evidence also shows that the fires spread according to “accelerant trails,” such as a trail of flammable liquid being poured on the floor. Some of the Davidians’ clothing found in the rubble also shows traces of gasoline, kerosene, Coleman fuel (liquid petroleum, sometimes called “white gas”), and lighter fluid, further suggesting that the Davidians use accelerants to start and spread the fires. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] Within eight minutes, the main building is engulfed in flames. One explosion, probably from a propane gas tank, is observed. Later investigation will find a propane tank with its top blown off in the debris. [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] After the compound burns to the ground, FBI agent Bob Ricks tells reporters, “David Koresh, we believe, gave the order to commit suicide and they all willingly followed.” [New York Times, 4/20/1993] Some of the Davidians who survive the conflagration later claim that the Davidians did not start the fires, but arson investigators with the Justice Department and the Texas Rangers, as well as an independent investigator, will conclude that Davidians did indeed start the fires in at least three different areas of the main building. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995] A 1993 Treasury Department report (see Late September - October 1993) will produce audiotapes of Davidians inside the compound and transcripts of conversations, secured via electronic surveillance, discussing the means of setting the fires. Voices on the tapes and in the transcripts say such things as: “The fuel has to go all around to get started.” “Got to put enough fuel in there.” “So, we only light ‘em as they come in,” or as a slightly different version has it, “So, we only light ‘em as soon as they tell me.” Once the fires begin, high winds and the breaches in the walls cause the flames to almost immediately begin consuming the compound. [Dean M. Kelley, 5/1995] In 1999, Colonel Rodney Rawlings, the senior military liaison to the HRT, will tell reporters that he heard Koresh give the orders to start the fires over FBI surveillance “bugs” (see October 8, 1999). Sage later describes the horror that goes through him and his fellow agents when they realize that the Davidians have torched the compound. He will recall “pleading” with the Davidians to leave the compound, and say: “I can’t express the emotions that goes through you. I had to physically turn around away from the monitor to keep my mind focused on what I was trying to broadcast to those people.” He will recall being horrified by the failure of people to flee the compound. “I fully anticipated those people would come pouring out of there,” he says. “I’d been through CS teargas on numerous occasions [in training exercises]. And I would move heaven and earth to get my kids out of that kind of an environment. And that’s frankly what we were banking on. That at least the parents would remove their children from that kind of situation.” Of Koresh, he will say: “By him intentionally lighting that place afire and consuming the lives of 78 people, including over 20 young children, was just inconceivable to me. In 25 years of law enforcement I’ve never been faced with someone that was capable of doing that.” [PBS Frontline, 10/1995] Six years later, the FBI will admit to releasing two pyrotechnic grenades into the compound, but insists the grenades did not start the fires (see August 25, 1999 and After). Plea for Release - At 12:12 p.m., Sage calls on Koresh to lead the Davidians to safety. Nine Davidians flee the compound and are arrested [PBS Frontline, 10/1995] , including one woman who leaves, attempts to return to the burning building, and tries unsuccessfully to fight off a federal agent who comes to her aid. [New York Times, 4/20/1993] One of the nine runs out of the building at around 12:28 p.m., indicating that even 21 minutes after the fire, it is possible for some of the inhabitants to make their escape. However, most of the Davidians retreat to areas in the center of the building and do not attempt to get out. [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]'Systematic Gunfire' - At 12:25 p.m., FBI agents hear “systematic gunfire” coming from inside of the building; some agents believe that the Davidians are either killing themselves or each other. The House committee investigation later finds that FBI agents hear rapid-fire gunshots coming from the compound; while many of the gunshots are probably caused by exploding ammunition, “other sounds were methodical and evenly-spaced, indicating the deliberate firing of weapons.” Fire Department Responds; Search for Survivors - At 12:41 p.m., fire trucks and firefighters begin attempting to put out the flames. HRT agents enter tunnels to search for survivors, particularly children. [Dean M. Kelley, 5/1995; PBS Frontline, 10/1995; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] No fire trucks are at the scene when the assault begins, and it takes around 25 minutes for the first fire department vehicles to respond to emergency calls from their stations in Waco. Bob Sheehy, mayor of Waco, later says the city fire department “first got a call after the fire had already started.” Ricks explains that fire engines were not brought to the compound earlier for fear that firefighters might have been exposed to gunfire from the compound, and because FBI officials did not expect a fire. “We did not introduce fire to this compound, and it was not our intention that this compound be burned down. I can’t tell you the shock and the horror that all of us felt when we saw those flames coming out of there. It was, ‘Oh, my God, they’re killing themselves.’” [New York Times, 4/20/1993]Death Toll - In all, 78 Branch Davidians, including over 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself, die in the fire. Nineteen of the dead are killed by close-range gunshot wounds. Almost all of the others either die from smoke inhalation, burns, or both. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] The number is improperly reported in a number of media sources, and varies from 75 to 81. Even the House committee report does not cite a definitive total. [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] Some of the FBI negotiators involved in the siege later say that they feel continued negotiations might have saved many, perhaps all, of the lives of those inside the compound. In an interview later in the year, one negotiator tells a reporter, “I’ll always, in my own mind, feel like maybe we could have gotten some more people out.” [New Yorker, 5/15/1995] But HRT member Barry Higginbotham, one of the snipers who observes the Davidians throughout the siege, will later state that neither he nor anyone on his team believed the Davidians would ever willingly surrender. Higginbotham will say: “We just felt that if you make them suffer a little more, deny them perhaps a little more food, lighting, power, things like that inside, that would cause more pressure on their leadership inside. And perhaps their leadership would go to Koresh and pressure him to start negotiating in good faith. It was hard to believe that Koresh was ever negotiating in good faith.” [PBS Frontline, 10/1995] In the hours after the conflagration, Ricks tells reporters: “We had hoped the women would grab their children and flee. That did not occur and they bunkered down the children and allowed them to go up in flames with them.… It was truly an inferno of flames.” Ricks says that authorities receive reports, perhaps from some of the survivors, that the children had been injected with some kind of poison to ease their pain. This claim is never confirmed. [New York Times, 4/20/1993]In the Bunker - FBI investigators combing the building after the conflagration find an enormous amount of guns and other weaponry inside. Dr. Rodney Crow, the FBI’s chief of identification services and one of the officials who examine the bodies of the Davidians, spends much of his time in the compound’s underground bunker, where many of the bodies are found. Crow later says: “There were weapons everywhere. I don’t remember moving a body that didn’t have a gun melted to it, intertwined with it, between the legs, under the arm, or in close proximity. And I’d say 18 inches to 20 inches would be close proximity.… The women were probably more immersed in the weapons than anyone else, because there was so much weaponry inside the bunker. It was like sea shells on a beach, but they were spent casings and spent bullets. If you had rubber gloves and tried to smooth it away, you’d tear your gloves away from the bullet points that are unexploded, or unspent ammunition. Then as you went through layer after layer, you came upon weapons that were totally burned. Until we got down to the floor, and it was mint condition ammunition there. Ammunition boxes not even singed.” The most powerful weapon Crow finds is a .50-caliber machine gun. Some of the bodies have gunshot wounds. Crow will say: “My theory is there was a lot of euthanasia and mercy killing. That group probably were just about as active as anywhere in the compound, mercifully putting each other out of misery in the last moments.” In total, 33 bodies are found inside the bunker; almost all the women and children found inside the compound are in the bunker. Many are found to have died from suffocation or smoke inhalation (two died from falling debris), but some died from gunshot wounds, and one woman was stabbed to death. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995; PBS Frontline, 10/1995] Local medical examiner Nizam Peerwani later says he does not believe the people in the bunker committed suicide, saying: “There has been a lot of speculation if this is a mass suicide or not. And—did they all go there to die? Ah, we don’t really think so. What I feel personally is that they tried to escape. A bunker was perhaps the safest area in the compound.” [PBS Frontline, 10/1995] Sage will say that he knew the children were dead sometime around 12:30 p.m. He recalls terminating the negotiations at that time, “because I didn’t want the loudspeaker bank to interfere with instructions being given on the ground. At that point in time, I walked over to the site in shock, basically. And, uh, the first thing I asked is, ‘Where are the kids?’” He is told, “Nowhere.” Sage will say: “They had not come out. They had been consumed.” [PBS Frontline, 10/1995]Koresh's Fate - Koresh and Schneider are found in a small room the authorities call “the communication room.” Koresh is dead of a single gunshot wound to the forehead. Schneider is dead from a gunshot wound in the mouth. Peerwani later says: “Did David Koresh shoot himself and Schneider shoot himself? Or did Schneider shoot David Koresh and then turn around and shoot himself? Certainly both are possible. We cannot be certain as to what really transpired.” [PBS Frontline, 10/1995]No Ill Effects from Gas - Peerwani and his colleagues examine the bodies for damage caused by the CS gas used in the assault, and find none. While many of the Davidians were exposed to the gas, according to tissue and blood studies, none inhaled enough of it to cause anything more than short-term discomfort. Concurrently, Peerwani and his colleagues find no damage from the propellant used in the ferret rounds. A fire report later written by Texas-based investigators will call the tear gas operation a failure at dispersing the Davidians. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995; PBS Frontline, 10/1995] Medical examinations show that some of the children may well have been overcome by the gas, and rendered unable to escape, but the compound had not been gassed for an hour before the fires began, and CS has a persistence factor of only 10 minutes—in other words, the effects should have worn off by the time the fires broke out. The gas proves ineffective against the adults, because the adult Davidians are equipped with gas masks. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995]Wrongly Executed Plan - The plan as signed by Reno called on law enforcement forces to deploy tear gas into the compound at stated intervals, then have agents retreat to await evacuees before approaching again. This “passive,” “restrained” approach was to have been followed for up to 72 hours before using assault vehicles to force entry. Instead, the agents wait only 12 minutes before beginning a motorized vehicle assault. [New Yorker, 5/15/1995]Taking Responsibility - One of the unlikely “heroes” of the debacle is Reno. She signed off on the attack (see April 17-18, 1993), and within hours of the attacks, she holds a televised press conference where she says: “I made the decision. I am accountable . The buck stops here” (see April 19, 1993). She repeats this statement over and over again on national television. [New Yorker, 5/15/1995]

Michael Fortier. [Source: Indianapolis Star]Future Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) travels to Kingman, Arizona, to move in with his old Army friend Michael Fortier (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990, November 1991 - Summer 1992, and March 1993) in Fortier’s trailer home, where he tells Fortier he intends to carry out some unnamed violent action against the government in response to the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and After). McVeigh briefly works as a security guard for State Security. Fortier will later recall, “I thought he was still in the Army when he showed up at my door,” noting McVeigh’s tight blond crewcut and his camouflage clothing. “When you saw him, it was like he never left. Actually, I never thought he would leave the service. It was just him.… I have to say McVeigh was a good soldier, a much better soldier than I ever was. His shoes were always spit shined and his clothes always pressed. I would put them on straight out of the dryer.” When they first met in the Army, Fortier will recall, he did not like McVeigh, who is from upstate New York (see 1987-1988). “He had this real New York attitude, real rude and blunt,” Fortier will recall. “He just had no tact.” But, he will continue, “you just got used to his attitude.” Staff Sergeant Albert Warnement, another member of the same company who also sometimes went shooting with McVeigh on the weekends, will later recall, “Fortier was probably his best friend.” Fortier’s mother Irene Fortier has a different recollection of McVeigh, remembering him as “polite and courteous.” McVeigh and Fortier share a dislike of the US government—in the front yard of his trailer, Fortier flies both an American flag and a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag often connected with right-wing militia groups—and a fascination with weaponry. Fortier keeps a half-dozen or more guns in his home, as is commonplace in many northern Arizona homes. McVeigh tells him it is time to take violent action against the US government (see August 21-31, 1992). McVeigh stays in Kingman for around five months, though he soon moves into a rented trailer in the Canyon West Mobile and RV trailer park, and gives Fortier’s address as his residence on an application to rent a private mail box, #206, at the Mail Room (see February - July 1994) under the alias “Tim Tuttle” (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994). He and Fortier discuss forming a militia to fight the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990), which, they believe, is represented by the government’s fatal assault against the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). [New York Times, 5/6/1995; New York Times, 5/21/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 151; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 79; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] During the first weeks of his stay at the Fortiers’ home, McVeigh visits his friend Roger Moore, an Arkansas gun dealer (see March 1993). At some time during his stay, he uses methamphetamines, probably obtained from Fortier and in the company of Fortier. He writes his father Bill during this time and asks him not to divulge his address. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] In October 1993, McVeigh leaves Arizona to move in with another Army friend, Terry Nichols (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994).

White supremacists, right-wing anti-government organizations, and others, including many members of the so-called “Patriot Movement” (see February 1992) are enraged over the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, they see NAFTA as “reflecting the growing power of a global elite, or New World Order” (see September 11, 1990). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

Some of the assault weapons banned under the 1994 crime bill. [Source: Senator Dianne Feinstein]Congress authorizes the passage of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, later named “The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,” which among other elements outlaws 19 separate types of assault weapons. The original bill, HR 4092, passed the House of Representatives in April on a 285-141 vote. The House bill provides $28 billion in spending for police hiring and training, prison construction, and crime prevention; expands the death penalty to cover an array of federal crimes; introduces the federal “three strikes” provision that automatically incarcerates three-time felons for lengthy jail terms; includes the Racial Justice Act that allows defendants to challenge death-penalty sentences on a racial basis; and bans the sale or transfer of handguns to juveniles without parental consent. A separate House vote in May approved the ban on the sale of assault weapons by a narrow 216-214 vote, and the entire package went to the Senate for reconciliation with that body’s own crime bill. A later version of the bill increased spending to $30 billion, shifted more funds to police training and less to prison construction, and dropped the Racial Justice Act along with funding for a crime prevention center in Texas. On August 25, the Senate thwarted efforts by Republicans to reopen debate on the bill, and the bill passed on a final vote of 61-38. President Clinton signs the bill into law on September 13. Within days of its passage, Congressional Republicans will announce their intention to revamp the bill as part of their “Contract with America,” charging that it fails to address the “broken” criminal justice system that fails “to hold criminals accountable” for their actions. Many Republicans will base their intention to revamp the bill on their opposition to the assault weapons ban. [McCollum, 1994; Time, 9/5/1994]

Two US Senators, Lauch Faircloth (R-NC) and Larry E. Craig (R-ID), ask the Justice Department to explain rumors they have heard from militia groups that federal agents are training at Fort Bliss, Texas, to assault those militia groups. In a letter, Faircloth and Craig ask about Fort Bliss and police training, writing in part, “You are doubtless aware of the concerns being raised in many quarters about what is perceived as the growing militarization of our domestic law enforcement agencies.” When the letter becomes publicly known, aides for both senators will claim that the senators are merely seeking information and concerned only about federal police agencies’ going beyond their normal training. The aides will claim that the letter does not mention the paramilitary groups, and will say neither Faircloth nor Craig support such groups. In a separate letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) makes the same accusation, saying that he has heard from militia group representatives that “New World Order” agents (see September 11, 1990) were preparing to invade them. Stockman calls these group representatives “reliable sources.” Stockman’s “reliable sources” told him that the assault was scheduled for March 25. It is unclear what Stockman believes had happened to that scheduled assault, which did not take place. Fort Bliss spokesperson Jean Offutt calls the warnings “ridiculous,” and Justice Department officials call them “nonsense.” Stockman, like Faircloth and Craig, says he has no ties to paramilitary groups, a statement that is false (see 10:50 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 23-24, 1995). [New York Times, 5/2/1995]

The Alfred P. Murrah Building after being bombed. [Source: CBS News]A truck bomb destroys the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people in America’s worst domestic terrorist attack. Timothy McVeigh, later convicted in the bombing, has ideological roots both in the Patriot world and among neo-Nazis like William Pierce, whose novel, The Turner Diaries (see 1978), served as a blueprint for the attack. [Washington Post, 4/20/1995; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001; Clarke, 2004, pp. 127] Initially, many believe that no American set off the bomb, and suspect Islamist terrorists of actually carrying out the bombing (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After). Their suspicions prove groundless. Investigators will find that the bomb is constructed of some 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, carried in 20 or so blue plastic 55-gallon barrels arranged inside a rented Ryder truck (see April 15, 1995). The bomb is detonated by a slow-burning safety fuse, most likely lit by hand. The fuse is attached to a much faster-burning detonation cord (“det cord”) which ignites the fertilizer and fuel-oil mixture. [New York Times, 4/27/1995] The Murrah Federal Building houses a number of federal agencies, including offices for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF); the Social Security Administration; the Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Veterans Affairs, and Agriculture departments; and the Secret Service. [Washington Post, 4/20/1995] It encompasses an entire city block, between 5th and 4th Streets and Harvey and Robinson Streets, and features a U-shaped, indented drive on 5th that allows for quick pickup and delivery parking. The entire building’s facade on this side is made of glass, allowing passersby to see into the offices in the building, as well as into the America’s Kids day care center on the second floor, which by this time is filling with children. It is in this driveway that McVeigh parks his truck. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 99-102]Entering the City - McVeigh drives into Oklahoma City, entering around 8:30 a.m. from his overnight stop in Ponca City, Oklahoma; the details reported of his entrance into the city vary (see 7:00 a.m. - 8:35 a.m., April 19, 1995). At 8:55 a.m., a security camera captures the Ryder truck as it heads towards downtown Oklahoma City [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] , a sighting bolstered by three people leaving the building who later say they saw the truck parked in front of the Murrah Building around this time. At 8:57, a security camera captures an image of McVeigh’s Ryder truck being parked outside the Murrah Building in a handicapped zone. One survivor of the blast, Marine recruiter Michael Norfleet, later recalls seeing the Ryder truck parked just outside the building next to the little circle drive on 5th Street leading up to the main entrance of the building. Norfleet had parked his black Ford Ranger in front of the Ryder. McVeigh Lights Fuses - McVeigh drives the Ryder truck west past the Murrah Building on NW Fourth Street, turns north on a one-way street, and turns right on Fifth Street. He pulls the truck over and parks near the Firestone store, next to a chain-link fence. He then lights the five-minute fuses from inside the cab (see 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995), sets the parking brake, drops the key behind the seat, opens the door, locks the truck, exits, and shuts the door behind him. A man later claims to have hit his brakes to avoid someone matching McVeigh’s description as he crossed Fifth Street around 9:00 a.m. McVeigh walks quickly toward a nearby YMCA building where he has hidden his getaway car, a battered yellow Mercury Marquis (see April 13, 1995), in the adjoining alleyway, crossing Robinson Street and crossing another street to get to the alleyway. He begins to jog as he approaches his car. He later says he remembers a woman looking at him as she is walking down the steps to enter the building; he will describe her as white, in her mid-30s, with dirty blonde hair. According to McVeigh’s own recollection, he is about 20 feet into the alley when the bomb goes off. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 184-185; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 158; Douglas O. Linder, 2006; The Oklahoman, 4/2009]Truck Explodes - At 9:02 a.m., the truck explodes, destroying most of the Murrah Building and seriously damaging many nearby buildings. Eventually, it will be determined that 168 people die in the blast, including 19 children. Over 500 are injured. The children are in the second-story day care center just above the parking space where McVeigh leaves the Ryder truck. McVeigh will later tell his biographers that he is lifted off his feet by the power of the blast. Devastation and Death - When the bomb detonates, the day care center and the children plummet into the basement. The building, constructed with large glass windows, collapses, sending a wave of flying glass shards and debris into the building and the surrounding area. The oldest victim is 73-year-old Charles Hurlbert, who has come to the Social Security office on the first floor. Hurlbert’s wife Jean, 67, also dies in the blast. The youngest victim is four-month-old Gabeon Bruce, whose mother is also in the Social Security office. One victim, Rebecca Anderson, is a nurse who runs towards the building to render assistance. She never makes it to the building; she is struck in the head by a piece of falling debris and will die in a hospital four days after the blast. Her heart and kidneys will be transplanted into survivors of the bombing. [Denver Post, 6/3/1997; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 153-154; Oklahoma City Journal Record, 3/29/2001] Sherri Sparks, who has friends still unaccounted for in the building, tells a reporter in the hours after the blast, “Oh, I can’t stand the thought of… those innocent children, sitting there playing, thinking they’re safe, and then this happens.” The explosion leaves a 30-foot-wide, 8-foot-deep crater in the street that is covered by the wreckage of the building’s upper floors. The north face of the nine-story building collapses entirely. [Washington Post, 4/20/1995; Washington Post, 4/22/1995] Mary Heath, a psychologist who works about 20 blocks from the Murrah Building, says the blast “shook the daylights out of things—it scared us to death. We felt the windows shake before we heard the noise.” In a neighboring building, a Water Resources Board meeting is just commencing; the audiotape of the meeting captures the sound of the blast (see 9:02 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995). [Washington Post, 4/20/1995; The Oklahoman, 4/2009] Norfleet, trapped in the Marine Corps office, is thrown into a wall by the explosion. His skull is fractured, and a shard of glass punctures his right eye. Three separate arteries are pierced, and Norfleet begins bleeding heavily. Two supply sergeants in the office are far less injured; Norfleet asks one, “How bad am I hurt?” and one replies, “Sir, you look really bad.” One of the two begins giving Norfleet first aid; Norfleet later recalls: “He immediately went into combat mode and started taking care of me. He laid me on a table and he started looking for bandages to administer first aid. And while I was laying on that table, I just knew that I was losing strength and that if I stayed in the building, I would die.” Norfleet wraps a shirt around his head and face to slow the bleeding, and the two sergeants help him to the stairs, through the fallen rubble, and eventually out. Norfleet will later say that he follows “a blood trail of somebody that had gone down the steps before me” to get outside, where he is quickly put into an ambulance. He loses almost half his body’s blood supply and his right eye. He will never fly again, and will soon be discharged for medical incapacity. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 161-162] Eighteen-month-old Phillip Allen, called “P.J.” by his parents, miraculously survives the blast. The floor gives way beneath him and he plunges 18 feet to land on the stomach of an adult worker on the floor below, Calvin Johnson. Landing on Johnson’s stomach saves P.J.‘s life. Johnson is knocked unconscious by the blast and by the impact of the little boy falling on him, but when he awakes, he carries the toddler to safety. P.J.‘s grandfather calls the child “Oklahoma’s miracle kid,” and media reports use the label when retelling the story of the miraculous rescue. P.J. is one of six children in the day care center to survive the blast. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 275-277] Some people later report their belief that the Murrah Building was rocked by a second explosion just moments after the first one, the second coming from a secure area managed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) that illegally stored explosives. Law professor Douglas O. Linder will later write, “Both seismic evidence and witness testimony supports the ‘two blast theory.’” [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] That theory is later disputed (see After 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Explosion's Effects Felt Miles Away - Buildings near the Murrah are also damaged, seven severely, including the Journal Record newspaper building, the offices of Southwestern Bell, the Water Resources Board, an Athenian restaurant, the YMCA, a post office building, and the Regency Tower Hotel. Two Water Resources Board employees and a restaurant worker are killed in the blast. The Journal Record building loses its roof. Assistant Fire Chief Jon Hansen later recalls, “The entire block looked like something out of war-torn Bosnia.” Every building within four blocks of the Murrah suffers some effects. A United Parcel Service truck 10 miles away has its windows shattered by the blast. Cars in parking lots around the area catch fire and burn. Millions of sheets of paper, and an innumerable number of glass shards, shower down for hundreds of feet around the building. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 28-30]Truck Axle Crushes Nearby Car - Richard Nichols (no relation to bomber Timothy McVeigh’s co-conspirator Terry Nichols), a maintenance worker standing with his wife a block and a half away from the Murrah Building, is spun around by the force of the blast. They throw open the back door of their car and begin taking their young nephew Chad Nichols out of the back seat, when Richard sees a large shaft of metal hurtling towards them. The “humongous object… spinning like a boomerang,” as Richard later describes it, hits the front of their Ford Festiva, smashing the windshield, crushing the front end, driving the rear end high into the air, and sending the entire car spinning backwards about 10 feet. Chad is not seriously injured. The metal shaft is the rear axle of the Ryder truck. Later, investigators determine that it weighs 250 pounds and was blown 575 feet from where the truck was parked. Governor Frank Keating (R-OK) points out the axle to reporters when he walks the scene a day or so later, causing some media outlets to incorrectly report that Keating “discovered” the axle. The scene will take investigators days to process for evidence. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 32; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 187-189]First Responders Begin Arriving - Within minutes, survivors begin evacuating the building, and first responders appear on the scene (see 9:02 a.m. - 10:35 a.m. April 19, 1995). McVeigh's Getaway - McVeigh flees the bomb site in his Mercury getaway car (see 9:02 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995), but is captured less than 90 minutes later (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995).

Steve Stockman. [Source: Steve Stockman]Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX), a freshman congressman who has won fans in the militia movement for his defense of “citizen’s militias” and his accusations that the Clinton administration deliberately caused the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After), receives a fax regarding the Oklahoma City bombings (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). The fax reads: “First update. Bldg 7 to 10 floors only military people on scene— BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms]/FBI. Bomb threat received Last Week. Perpetrator unknown at this time. Oklahoma.” According to a statement released by Stockman five days later (see April 23-24, 1995), no one in his office pays any attention to the fax until they learn of the Oklahoma City bombing. Once they realize that the fax may pertain to the bombing, a staffer forwards it to the FBI. Later investigation will show that the fax was sent by Libby Molloy, a former Republican Party official in Texas who now works for Wolverine Productions in Michigan, a firm that produces shortwave broadcasts aimed at militia audiences. (The fax has the word “Wolverine” stamped across the top as part of the sender information.) Molloy also sends the fax to Texas State Senator Mike Galloway and to the offices of the National Rifle Association (NRA). [New York Times, 4/23/1995; 'Lectric Law Library, 4/24/1995; Dallas Morning News, 4/25/1995; Time, 5/8/1995; Houston Press, 6/22/1995]

The press reports that Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) received a fax shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) that described the effects of the blast (see 10:50 a.m. April 19, 1995). FBI investigators initially believed that Stockman received the fax three minutes before the 9:02 a.m. blast, but later determined that it had been sent shortly afterwards. They believe that the fax may have been sent by Mark Koernke, a member of the Michigan Militia. Authorities are seeking Koernke for questioning, but say that questioning him is not a high priority. [New York Times, 4/23/1995; 'Lectric Law Library, 4/24/1995] The fax will later be determined to have been sent around 10:50 a.m., almost two hours after the blast. Subsequent reporting claims that Stockman received the fax from Libby Molloy, the former Republican chairwoman from Orange County, Texas, who has ties to the Michigan Militia. Texas State Senator Mike Galloway also says that his office received a copy of the fax the same day, and turned it over to the FBI. The fax contained the word “Wolverine” stamped at the top; Molloy now works for Wolverine Productions, a Michigan firm that produces shortwave broadcasts aimed at militia audiences. [Dallas Morning News, 4/25/1995] Koernke broadcasts via Wolverine Productions. Stockman will deny knowing either Molloy or Koernke, though Molloy will later say that Stockman’s office has provided Wolverine Productions with information helpful for Koernke’s broadcasts. [Time, 5/8/1995] Stockman releases a statement concerning the fax and the subsequent press reporting, writing in part: “On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing someone sent our office an anonymous fax which appeared to relate to that tragedy. Our office—not aware of the bombing or the meaning of the fax—set it aside. Our office—like the offices of most public officials, receives every imaginable kind of mail from the public. This fax was no different. After my staff heard news reports of the tragedy—the fax was retrieved and I was made aware of it. I immediately instructed my staff to turn the fax over to the FBI. My office did so within minutes. There has been some confusion in the media over when my office received this fax and when we turned it over to the FBI. There has been no confusion in my office—we turned it over right away.” Stockman says the FBI has confirmed his version of events, and attaches a statement from FBI official John Collingwood showing that he sent the fax “at 11:57 a.m. on April 19, 1995, to the FBI Office of Public and Congressional Affairs.” Stockman also says that a member of his staff sent another copy of the fax to the National Rifle Association (NRA) on April 20, and says, “I believe the staffer acted in good faith, nonetheless, this was done without my knowledge.” Stockman believes he received the fax because of a memo he sent to Attorney General Janet Reno on March 22, 1995, asking if the Justice Department planned any raids against “citizen’s militia” groups and warning of a Branch Davidian-like debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) if the raids were actually carried out. ['Lectric Law Library, 4/24/1995] The Houston Press will later report that the initial confusion about the timing of the fax was caused by the NRA, whom the Press will call “Stockman’s chief patron.” The Press will also note that Stockman has ties to the militia movement, and in a recent Guns and Ammo magazine article, accused the Clinton administration of deliberately killing the Branch Davidians and burning their compound in order to justify its ban on assault weapons (see September 13, 1994). Stockman says he regrets “some of the language he used” in the article. Stockman has also associated himself with anti-Semitic radio show host Tom Valentine, and railed against “outside influences,” presumably Jewish, in the Federal Reserve and other federal financial institutions. [Houston Press, 6/22/1995]

The Montana Militia calls newly elected Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-ID) the best friend militia groups have in Congress, according to a report by the New York Times. The Montana Militia’s fall 1994 catalogue sells, among other items, a bomb-making manual, tapes explaining the “one-world government” conspiracy, and a video of a speech made by Chenoweth in late 1993, in which, the catalogue claims, she told listeners over 50 percent of the United States is now under “the control of the New World Order” (see September 11, 1990). She does not use the actual term on the videotape. “We are in a day and age now when we are facing an unlawful government from time to time,” she told listeners. “We are in a battle today that is far more insidious and dangerous as far as conquering our people and our soul than we have ever faced before. Our land has been taken. It’s time we reclaim our land.” The tape is titled “America in Crisis” and is sold along with tapes like “En route to Global Occupation,” which states, “The anti-Christ is not coming—he’s here!” Chenoweth has also made claims of an impending “New World Order” takeover of the United States, and has cited as proof the UN’s designation of Yellowstone National Park as a world heritage site. (The Sierra Club will note: “In real life, the UN label means only that the site has ‘outstanding universal value.’ The regulations under which it was designated were drawn up by Ronald Reagan’s Interior Secretary, James Watt.”) Chenoweth is now under pressure to explain her contacts with militia groups, an issue that did not significantly arise during the 1994 election but was sparked by recent revelations that Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) received faxes from militia groups in the hours after the Oklahoma City bombings (see 10:50 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 23-24, 1995). Ken Toole of the Montana Human Rights Network says, “Given what we know about the conspiratorial world view and violent tendencies that are at the core of militia beliefs, for elected officials to be supportive or even neutral does nothing but embolden these people.” In March 1995, Chenoweth issued a press release demanding that the federal government immediately stop sending “black helicopters” filled with armed federal agents to interfere with private citizens’ affairs in her state (see February 15, 1995). Chenoweth, Stockman, and other congressional members who have had militia members as campaign volunteers and have presented militia concerns to the House insist that they are doing nothing more than looking out for their constituents. [New York Times, 5/2/1995; Sierra Magazine, 5/1996]

A New York Times analysis of indicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) uses an interview with FBI profiler Jack Douglas to paint a picture of McVeigh as a burgeoning serial killer. Douglas, the model for the FBI analyst in the movie The Silence of the Lambs, describes McVeigh as an underachieving loner whose stunted social development, obsessive neatness, inability to deal with his abandonment by his mother, sexual frustration, obsession with guns, and overarching alienation led him to conceive and execute a plot that killed scores of innocent people. “There are the same kind of characteristics” in McVeigh’s makeup as serial killers possess, Douglas says. “Asocial, asexual, a loner, withdrawn, from a family with problems, strong feelings of inadequacy from early in life, an underachiever.” McVeigh did well in the highly structured environment of the US Army (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990 and January - March 1991 and After), Douglas notes, but was unable to function successfully outside of that environment (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). His lifelong obsession with guns (see 1987-1988) blended with his increasing fascination with far-right militia, white supremacist, and separatist ideologies that led him to believe the government was actively plotting to disarm and repress its citizenry. McVeigh, always fascinated with computers, used the burgeoning network of computerized bulletin boards, email clients, videotape exchanges, shortwave radio broadcasts, and other information resources to fuel his beliefs, all codified in what Times reporter John Kifner calls “a venomous novel called The Turner Diaries” (see 1978) that depicts rebel white supremacists overthrowing the federal government and committing genocide against minority citizens. Apocalyptic World View Triggered by Events - McVeigh’s increasingly apocalyptic world view, Douglas says, led him to carry out the bomb plot, perhaps in an effort to bring about the same supremacist rebellion that The Turner Diaries depicts. The federal raids on Randy Weaver’s cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (see August 31, 1992), and the Branch Davidian compound in Texas (see April 19, 1993), the passage of the Brady gun control bill (see November 30, 1993), and the birth of the paramilitary militia movement (see August 1994 - March 1995) all spurred McVeigh forward. Kifner writes: “The paramilitary movement vowed to resist the government and publish manuals on forming underground guerrilla squads. Mr. McVeigh was just a little ahead of the curve.” The final straw for McVeigh, Kifner and Douglas theorize, was the passage of the August 1994 crime bill that outlawed 19 types of semiautomatic assault weapons (see September 13, 1994). Shortly thereafter, McVeigh wrote an angry letter to his friend Michael Fortier alerting him that he intended to take some sort of “positive action” against the government (see September 13, 1994). Shared Inadequacies - Douglas calls McVeigh’s “obsession with weapons” an “overcompensation for deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy.… They compensate for a while by talking the talk, but after a while they have to go out and do something about it. Typically the time for violence is in the mid-20s. They look in the mirror and see they’re going nowhere fast. This is an easily controlled and manipulated personality. They are looking for something to hang their hat on, some ideology. They have difficulty fitting into groups, but they are more mission-oriented, more focused.” Seattle forensic psychiatrist Kenneth Muscatel has called this type of personality disorder “Smerdyakov syndrome,” after the scorned half-brother in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, who listens to the other brothers inveigh against their father until, finally, he murders the father. Douglas notes the devoted friendship between McVeigh and indicted co-conspirator Terry Nichols, another underachieving loner who did well in the Army. “These two are birds of a feather,” Douglas says. “Each feeds off the other’s inadequacies.” Of McVeigh, Douglas says: “These people are comfortable in a structured environment, they do very well. But outside of a structured environment, without that rigidity, he just can’t survive. On the other hand, he’s probably doing fine now in jail. I bet they would say he’s a model prisoner.” 'Red Dawn' and the Militia Movement - McVeigh’s favorite movie is, by all accounts, a 1984 film called Red Dawn that depicts a group of Texas high school football players banding together to defeat an invasion of Soviet paratroopers. The “Wolverines,” as the footballers term themselves, transform themselves into a polished, lethal guerrilla force. The film contains a number of tropes that resonate with McVeigh and other militia sympathizers: the use of gun-registration forms to enable the Soviet invasion, political leaders eager to betray the American citizenry they represent, and others. The film is a cult classic among militia members. Along with another extraordinarily popular series of movies, the Rambo films, Red Dawn expresses what sociologist James William Gibson has noted is a new perspective on military veterans and popular culture; whereas traditional war movies show raw recruits uniting to battle an evil enemy on behalf of a just national cause, post-Vietnam movies such as Red Dawn and the Rambo films popularize the archetype of an alienated loner or small band of outlaws, betrayed by their own government and fighting for their view of the American ideal as renegades. Another favorite film of McVeigh’s is a very different offering, the 1985 black comedy Brazil, which depicts an Orwellian future dominated by an all-powerful bureaucracy. Actor Robert DeNiro plays a commando-like “outlaw repairman”; his character’s name is “Tuttle,” one of the aliases used by McVeigh (see April 19, 1993 and After, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, December 1993, February - July 1994, and May 12, 1995). The last movie McVeigh rented before the Oklahoma City bombing was Blown Away, the tale of a mad bomber. 'The Turner Diaries', Gun Regulation, and the Militia Movement - Kifner notes that much has been made of McVeigh’s fascination with William Pierce’s novel The Turner Diaries. McVeigh was an avid reader, paging through mercenary and gun magazines, white supremacist and anti-Semitic newsletters and fliers, and an array of apocalyptic and war novels. One of the more unusual works found in McVeigh’s possessions is a document titled “Operation Vampire Killer 2000,” written by militia leader Jack McLamb and predicting a “globalist,” “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) takeover of the US by “the year 2000.” The document names the plotters against American democracy as, among others, the Order of the Illuminati, international bankers, the United Nations, the “Rothschild Dynasty,” the Internal Revenue Service, CBS News, Communists, the Yale secret society Skull and Bones, “humanist wackos,” and, possibly, aliens from outer space in Unidentified Flying Objects. McLamb writes: “For the World Elite to truly enjoy their ‘utopian’ Socialist Society, the subject masses must not have the means to protect themselves against more ‘voluntary compliance.’ When one grasps this logical position, there is no longer any question about it: THE GUNS WILL HAVE TO GO.” But The Turner Diaries was, according to one person involved in the investigation, McVeigh’s “Bible” (see August 20, 1995). As with so much of McVeigh’s reading material, Turner posited the forcible confiscation of citizen-owned guns by the US government as the presage to tyranny. In a book on the paramilitary movement, Kenneth Stern wrote: “Those who would regulate guns were cast as tyrants who were coming for people’s guns first. The government had to disarm citizens in order to subjugate them. The United Nations could march in and take over America; loyal Americans could be sent to concentration camps.” Both McVeigh and the paramilitary movement were “developing in the same time line,” Stern tells Kifner. “I would date the first functioning militia as February of 1994 in Montana, and then spreading to Michigan and other places” (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994). McVeigh and Nichols were apparently influenced by the writings of former Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam, who advocated a “leaderless resistance” of tiny, independent cells that “state tyranny” would find more difficult to control (see February 1992). “No one need issue an order to anyone,” Beam wrotes. “These idealists truly committed to the cause of freedom will act when they feel the time is ripe, or will take their cues from others who proceed them.” In Pierce’s novel, a bombing almost exactly like the Oklahoma City blast is carried out by the novel’s hero Earl Turner; the novel’s bombing destroys the FBI headquarters in Washington and inspires a nationwide revolt by white supremacists against the “tyrannical” government. It is conceivable, Kifner concludes, that McVeigh’s bomb was intended to strike the same sort of blow, and perhaps evoke the same results. [New York Times, 12/31/1995]

Norm Olson. Olson is wearing an ‘Alaska Citizens’ Militia’ shoulder patch as part of his pseudo-military garb. [Source: Political Carnival]Former Michigan Militia members Norm Olson and Ray Southwell concoct the idea of holding a “Third Continental Congress” to redress the problems they see plaguing the nation—problems they believe stem primarily from a conspiracy of Jews, liberals, and minorities to repress white Christians. Olson and Southwell were thrown out of the Michigan Militia after Olson told media representatives that the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was engineered by the Japanese government in retaliation for the CIA’s supposed involvement in the Tokyo subway gas attack. Southwell envisions the Third Continental Congress, or TCC, to operate as a directing body for all the nation’s various militia groups, working together under the TCC rubric to “reestablish justice in America for all the people, whatever color they may be, or whatever faith system they may observe.” Southwell calls the envisioned dominance of the TCC “God’s will.” Olson says: “My goal is not to plan a revolution, for revolution will come. My goal is not to point fingers, lay blame, or find fault, for few doubt the crimes of the present de facto government. My goal is not to cast support to politicians or to shore up the broken machine that the federal government has become. Rather, my goal is to establish the Republican Provisional Government.” The first official TCC meeting, held in October 1996 in a Kansas City, Missouri, Holiday Inn, only attracts about a dozen delegates due to bad weather, though a few more arrive as the meeting wears on. Attendees include Sarah Lowe, whose husband currently heads the white separatist “Republic of Texas,” and Texas conspiracist James Vallaster. Southwell issues a manifesto calling for a Continental Defense Force, a repackaging of his original Third Continental Congress idea. The next meeting of the TCC occurs in January 1997 in Independence, Missouri, with nothing concrete being determined. Some TCC delegates, impatient with the inaction, decide among themselves to take some sort of decisive action. Several delegates, including Ronald Griesacker (a corrections officer, a well-known figure among militias, and a former Republic of Texas member), Kevin and Terry Hobeck (owners of an Ohio trucking firm), and Dennis and Ardith Fick, decide to form their own Continental Congress, which reportedly meets in Silver Lake, Indiana, in February 1997. One of this splinter group’s first members is Bradley Glover (see October 1995 and After), a Kansas militia member looking for extremist groups with an eye to violence. Other members include Thomas and Kimberly Newman, Michael Dorsett (a tax dodger and “common law” advocate), Merlon “Butch” Lingenfelter Jr. (a Wisconsin dairy farmer whose family believes a vast Jewish conspiracy runs most of Western civilization—see 1986), and, unbeknownst to the other members, several undercover officers of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who were at the January 1997 TCC meeting and were concerned about the radical statements of some of the splinter group’s members. In April 1997, the splinter members meet in Towanda, Kansas. Glover and Dorsett make increasingly fiery statements, impelling some of the other members to leave. The focus of the meeting turns to the idea of foreign, United Nations-led troops being housed at US military bases, presumably to help the US government crush the “patriot” militia movement and impose martial law. Later that year, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League will write: “Allegations of such troops had been made so often and with such confidence in the patriot community that their presence was taken for granted by many patriots. Radio broadcaster Mark Koernke regularly spoke of hundreds of thousands of UN soldiers hiding in the United States, at military installations, in the national parks, and elsewhere. Indeed, the New World Order (see September 11, 1990) hardly seemed to bother with the effort of hiding them any longer.” The members that remain decide to take action. They determine to develop an arsenal of weapons and military equipment with which to attack government installations that are presumed to house foreign troops. They will hide in safe locations. The Hobecks sell their trucking firm to provide cash for the group, and travel to Colorado to establish a “base” at the Thirty Mile Resort in the Rio Grande National Forest. Others stage reconnaissance missions on military bases, including Holloman Air Force Base at Alamagordo, New Mexico. They station guards during the April and May 1997 meetings in Towanda, and even arm their children, who help patrol Glover’s farm. In June, Glover moves into Dorsett’s home in Arlington, Texas, in preparation for a strike on Fort Hood (see July 4-11, 1997). [Mark Pitcavage, 1997]

Author Brandon M. Stickney, a reporter for the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal in upstate New York, catalogs a number of unproven and sometimes extremist conspiracy theories that have sprouted in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Stickney includes his findings in his “unauthorized biography” of accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), All-American Monster. Among the theories Stickney presents: The bombing was carried out by the Japanese. This theory was promulgated by Michigan Militia leaders Norm Olson and Ray Southwell (see April 1994), and proved so embarrassing for the two that they resigned their posts. Both the Oklahoma City bombing and the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) were engineered by Clinton administration personnel in order to kill two former bodyguards of President Clinton who were preparing to go public with lurid tales of Clinton’s sexual transgressions. Secret Service agent Alan Wicher was killed in Oklahoma, and BATF agent Robert William was killed at Waco. Clinton attended Wicher’s funeral, and William had worked for the BATF in Little Rock while Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Idaho resident Bill Trowbridge told an Associated Press reporter after a militia meeting: “[T]hat makes four different bodyguards killed. Three in Waco, and this one. Sure did benefit Bill Clinton, didn’t it? Check that out.” The UN participated in the bombing plot. This theory has been promoted by the John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), the editors of the white-separatist magazine The Spotlight, and other organizations and groups that have warned about a partnership between the UN and the US government to impose tyranny and martial law on American citizens, as part of the imposition of what they call the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990). Gate Keepers information service representative Pam Beesley told an AP reporter that “this is what the UN does when they go in and overthrow a country. They produce unrest in the country first.” The bomb was an “electrodynamic gaseous fuel device” impossible for amateurs like McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols to have made. Instead, it must have been made by US officials possessed of “high-level, top-secret” information. This theory came from former FBI agent Ted Gunderson, who makes regular appearances in The Spotlight. According to Gunderson, “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995) was “vaporized by design” in the blast, and McVeigh was a “throwaway” or an “expendable asset.” Two bombs, not one, destroyed the Murrah Federal Building. It is true that two “incidents” were recorded at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, 11.9 seconds apart, but, according to Oklahoma chief geophysicist James Lawson, the second tremor was not caused by a second bomb, but by the building collapsing (see After 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Lawson told the AP he still gets calls from people demanding to know about the “second explosion.” “A lot of them are anxious to explain to me that our government committed mass murder,” he said. “They are disappointed that I’m not saying it was two blasts.” Stickney writes that many people have told him flatly that “they know” the government caused the bombing, and writes: “No matter what I told them, or for how long I tried to tell it, they would not change their minds that the government was involved. Distrust in public officials has reached the point of delusion, where Americans create their own explanations they cannot understand. One of the people who spoke with me went so far as to say he’d obtained a photograph of the bombed-out Murrah (ordered through a late-night AM radio show) that ‘proves two bombs were set off. McVeigh was led to Oklahoma by his nose, by the government.’” A video titled Oklahoma City: What Really Happened sells well at gun shows and through militia magazines and Web sites. On the box, it poses the questions: “Was there more than one bomb?” “What happened to John Doe No. 2?” “Was there a Middle Eastern connection?” and “Did some occupants of the building have prior warning?” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 265-267]

Entrance to Fort Hood, Texas. [Source: New York Times]Fort Hood, Texas, preparing for the annual “Freedom Fest” Fourth of July celebration, readies itself for a large crowd of local civilians planning to spend the day enjoying fireworks, marathons, concessions, military bands, carnival rides, and community activities. However, anti-government activists Bradley Glover and Michael Dorsett are captured by FBI and Missouri state police officers in Missouri before they can turn the festival into a massacre. Glover and Dorsett have become convinced that the United Nations is housing Communist Chinese troops at the military base, in conjuction with a “New World Order” conspiracy to invade and occupy the United States (see September 11, 1990). Glover, Dorsett, and others—all “splinter” members of an organization calling itself the “Third Continental Congress” (TCC—see Summer 1996 - June 1997)—are planning a multi-pronged attack on the Army base. Soon after, five others are arrested in conjunction with the plot. History of the Fort Hood Plot - Glover and other TCC members believe that the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was a plot by federal agencies to gin up an excuse to persecute “patriot” organizations. Glover told British reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing that “it’s only a matter of time now before the shooting war begins.” He believed that the bombing would be followed by heavy-handed anti-terrrorism legislation that would see federal agencies attempt to violently eradicate militia groups, and in turn, those groups would violently resist. “If this thing goes down,” Glover predicted in May 1995, “there’s going to be an extremely large number of US military that’s coming to our side with their weapons. They’ll turn like a dog on a cat.” He believed the militias would easily defeat the government forces—“We can whip those guys. We can take out the so-called ninja wanna-bes. We’ll beat ‘em quick”—but worries that President Clinton will turn to the Chinese forces he supposedly has housed throughout the United States: “That’s what worries us,” Glover said. “Then we’re gonna be fighting big time.” Glover became known to federal authorities after his frequent interviews with reporters after the Oklahoma City bombing, and claims to lead groups such as the Southern Kansas Regional Militia and the First Kansas Mechanized Infantry. (In his “real” life, Glover is a part-time computer consultant.) When the expected crackdown failed to materialize, Glover became a national council member of a national “umbrella” militia group called the Tri-States Militia (see October 1995 and After) and then began associating with ever-more violent anti-government extremists. Glover, Dorsett, and a small group of extremists devise an extensive plan to strike at a number of government facilities and military bases, beginning with Fort Hood. Arrests - But federal and state authorities are well aware of their plans. At 6:15 a.m. on the morning of July 4, FBI agents arrest Glover and Dorsett in their tents in the Colorado Bend State Park. The two have an arsenal with them: two rifles, five pistols, 1600 rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vests, a smoke grenade, a homemade silencer, explosive material, a night vision scope, and other items. “Their explosives would have been more damaging to the personnel at Fort Hood than to the physical installation,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Lieutenant Richard Coffey later tells a Texas newspaper reporter. “They did not have the same philosophy as the people in Oklahoma City. They were not looking for a huge explosion to make their point.” Instead, they planned small, repeated explosions. Glover, charged only with weapons violations, posts bail and flees to Wisconsin, where he is quickly arrested again after another weapons charge is added to the original indictment. Dorsett is held on an outstanding federal passport violation. Fellow plotter Merlon “Butch” Lingfelter is later arrested in Wisconsin on July 10, while looking for Glover; he surrenders his two machine guns and two pipe bombs, but says, “I’m not trying to be a noble knight in this, but it’s time somebody somewhere does something.” Despite his defiance, Lingenfelter tells a reporter that the meetings held by Glover were merely social outings. Kevin and Terry Hobeck are arrested on July 10 in Colorado after giving two illegal automatic weapons to undercover police officers; Thomas and Kimberly Newman are arrested on July 11 in Kansas after Thomas Newman gives the same undercover officers a sack full of pipe bombs. Suicide Mission? - One law enforcement official believes that the group may have intended to die in the planned Fort Hood attack. “I think you have to have a warped sense of reality to think you can pull of a mission like that,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain James Keathley later tells a Denver reporter. “It sounds like a suicide mission to me. I don’t know if they could have pulled this off.” [Mark Pitcavage, 1997; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]Sentences - Glover will draw a seven-year prison sentence, and the others lesser terms. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

The prosecution in the trial of accused Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and November 3, 1997) links Nichols and his alleged co-conspirator, convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997), to a rifle stolen from an Arkansas gun dealer, Roger Moore (see November 5, 1994 and Before July 3, 1995). Prosecutors have alleged that Nichols and McVeigh, who planned the robbery, used the proceeds from the robbery to finance the bombing. The link between Nichols and the robbery is made in part by Karen Anderson, Moore’s longtime girlfriend, who says the ornate, custom-made .308-caliber rifle found in Nichols’s Herington, Kansas, home (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995) was hers. She says when prosecutors first showed her the rifle, she exclaimed: “It’s my baby!… It was made for me.” Anderson says she has been Moore’s girlfriend for over 20 years, and lives in what is apparently an open relationship with Moore and his wife Carol. Prosecutors say Nichols donned a ski mask and robbed Moore’s gun dealership of more than $60,000 in guns, precious jewels, gold, silver, cash, and other items. Anderson says she recognized several other weapons seized by FBI agents from Nichols’s home. Of one, a shotgun, she says: “I shot a pair of blue jeans with this a couple of times. Jeans with holes cost $100. I figured if you shot them yourself, you could save about $90.” Anderson’s colorful testimony and flamboyant gestures trigger several waves of laughter in the courtroom, including one instance where she apologizes for inadvertently waving a submachine gun at Judge Richard P. Matsch, saying, “I just pointed it at the judge again!” Prosecutor Beth Wilkinson quips in response, “No matter how mad he makes you, don’t fire it.” Anderson says she has a list of the serial numbers of many of the stolen guns; Moore previously told investigators his list of the serial numbers disappeared the day of the robbery. Anderson also discusses her friendship with McVeigh, and says she and Moore were so impressed with McVeigh’s warnings about a United Nations plot to take over the country that they visited several military bases in an unsuccessful search for Russian vehicles. After Anderson testifies, Moore testifies, telling the jury how he was robbed by a man who carried a shotgun, wore a black ski mask, and bound him with duct tape before purloining items from his farm, from which he runs his dealership. He says he was alone on his farm the morning of the robbery, and had just gone outside to feed the animals when he heard a voice say, “Lay on the ground.” He turned and saw “a horrible picture, a man dressed with camouflage, with a black ski mask, carrying a pistol-grip shotgun aimed right at my face.” Attached to the shotgun was a garrote wire that he says could “cut your windpipe and jugular vein.” The robber was a white man wearing what he thinks were Israeli combat boots, Vietnam-era camouflage pants and shirt, and military gloves. Moore says he could see a short beard and suntanned skin through the mouth opening in the mask. He identifies a number of weapons shown to him by prosecution lawyers as being among those stolen from his dealership. Defense lawyer Michael Tigar accuses Moore of conspiring with McVeigh to commit insurance fraud. Tigar asks Moore: “Isn’t it a fact you were not robbed? Isn’t it a fact that you and Mr. McVeigh worked out a plan to get these guns out on the market, and you would collect whatever you could from the insurance company?” Moore angrily responds, “I deny that.” He admits to seeking an insurance settlement even though he had no serial numbers for the stolen weaponry, nor an accurate accounting of the weapons he said had been stolen. He also acknowledges telling investigators differing accounts of the robbery, and engaging in friendly letter exchanges with McVeigh after the robbery, including one letter written by Moore in the days before the bombing that complained of the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) and stated, “Plan is to bring the country down and have a few more things happen, then offer the 90 percent a solution (Better Red than Dead).” He also admits to using the alias “Bob Miller” on the gun-show circuit, and admits to previously telling lawyers that he suspected law enforcement agents or militia members of robbing him. However, he says, he also suspected McVeigh of setting him up, and says that the letters were designed to persuade McVeigh to come back to Arkansas so he could question him about the robbery. [New York Times, 11/18/1997; New York Times, 11/19/1997]

Libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX—see 1978-1996, July 9-10, 2006, July 22, 2007, and August 4, 2008) gives an interview to radio host Alex Jones in which he accuses President-elect Barack Obama of working to undermine the US government in favor of a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990), a UN-led “one-world government.” Paul says that he believes the incoming Obama administration is orchestrating some sort of “international crisis” that will give Obama the chance to begin implementing his sinister plan: “I think it’s going to be an announcement of a new monetary order, and they’ll probably make it sound very limited, they’re not going to say this is world government, even though it is if you control the world’s money and you control the military, which they do indirectly.… A world central bank, worldwide regulation and world control of the whole system, of all the commodities and all the natural resources, what else can you call it other than world government?… Obama wouldn’t be there if he didn’t toe the line.… [T]his could be the beginning of the end of what’s left of our national sovereignty.” Paul says that many non-US media outlets are already hailing Obama as “the world’s leader.” [Crooks and Liars, 11/17/2008]

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, joined by National Review deputy managing editor Kevin Williamson, asserts that Obama administration members are working behind the scenes to move towards what they call a “one-world government.” Williamson tells Beck and their viewers that Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, belongs to a group that is “arguing for… the same stuff that the left is always arguing for, which is transferring wealth and power out of citizens’ hands and into the government’s hands.” Williamson continues: “You know, the left always needs an emergency because they can’t get this stuff done through normal democratic means. So, in the ‘30s, it was the Depression, and then it was World War II. Then it was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. And then after the Soviet Union fell apart, it became the environmental movement.” Beck responds: “Right. Let me—I’m going to have them take you someplace that I like to call ‘one-world government.’” Beck later says that Browner “was involved in a socialist organization” that “wants one-world government.” Williamson agrees: “Yeah, they’re big on what they call, you know, global architecture, transnational architecture, which is just another way of saying sort of UN-style bureaucracies that would be international in nature and would de-emphasize American power and global leadership.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Beck and Williamson are echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010).

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano hosts radio host Alex Jones on the online program Freedom Watch. Jones says that he has long pointed out “how hundreds of mainstream news articles a week are saying there is a new world order, a global government. It will be run by the very banks that are collapsing society by design, and we will pay carbon taxes to them.… [T]he good news is, I’ve never seen an awakening this big. And I’m seeing, you know, people like Glenn Beck talk about the new world order on Fox. I’m seeing you talk about it for years before him. We’re seeing [CNN host] Lou Dobbs talk about it. We’re seeing, you know, mainline talk show hosts—[radio host Rush] Limbaugh is even talking about global government now. [Radio host] Michael Savage is talking about how he thinks, you know, Obama may stage crises to bring in martial law.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Jones is echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that are echoed by Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck (see March 17, 2009), Bill O’Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009), and others (see April 6, 2009).

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, with former UN Ambassador John R. Bolton as his guest, says that the Obama administration is pushing for a “global currency.” The assertion is part of Beck’s larger claim that Obama wants to steer the US towards some sort of “one-world government.” Beck says: “Ambassador, everybody is calling for global currency. I think part of this is a game, but I think, also, part of it is a—I mean, now the UN is saying, you know what? We should have a global currency. It’s also a movement to tie the entire globe together into one big government. Am I wrong or right?” Beck adds later in the interview: “You’re known as a fighter. I mean, you are a guy in there, man, you were just taking the fight right to them. So, what does the average person do? I mean, the average person, they hear, you know, I might be losing my sovereignty.… What—who do—who’s on our side?” Bolton responds: “Well, you know, I think it’s important we understand what we mean by sovereignty. To Europeans and many left-wing intellectuals in this country, it’s just kind of an abstract concept that doesn’t mean much. But I think to most Americans, sovereignty means our control over our own government. It’s about self-government.” Beck later says: “Ambassador, when you say world government, it does sound nuts. And because everybody knows, nobody is for world government,” and Bolton responds: “That’s why they don’t call it world government anymore. And they’ll try and find these other phrases. But you have to look underneath of it. And it’s on a range of issues, not just the money supply, but gun control, the death penalty, abortion, all—global warming—all of which are issues we can and should debate in our—in our constitutional democratic framework. We don’t need to decide them internationally. But that’s what the agenda is of many people very close to the Obama administration.” [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Beck and Bolton are echoing claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that are echoed by Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck (see March 17, 2009), Bill O’Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009), and others (see April 6, 2009).

Cliff Kincaid, the editor of the conservative Accuracy in Media, accuses President Obama of seeking to appoint an advocate of the “new world order” to the State Department. Kincaid is referring to Obama’s nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Kincaid says Koh’s nomination “is beyond worrisome. This is terrifying that—the thought of this kind of guy with these views becoming the top lawyer at the State Department. But seen in the light of the some of the other appointments Obama has made, it’s consistent with his push, which is now out in the open, for the US to become really subsumed into this, quote, ‘new world order’ that everybody keeps talking about, in which our sovereignty has been sacrificed for the, quote, ‘greater good.’” Kincaid is harking back to claims made in the ‘90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans’ guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010). [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Three days later, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) will say that Obama’s nomination of the “internationalist” Koh shows that Obama is “contemptuous of American values” (see April 9, 2009).

One of Hayden’s Twitter posts. [Source: Twitteradar (.com)]Daniel Knight Hayden, an Oklahoma man who has declared himself affiliated with local tea party organizations and the “Oath Keeper” movement (see March 9, 2009 and March 2010), is arrested by FBI agents after posting a series of messages on Twitter threatening to unleash a violent attack on Oklahoma state government officials on April 15, “Tax Day.” On April 13, under the moniker “CitizenQuasar,” Hayden began posting a blizzard of “tweets” about his intention to be on the Oklahoma State Capitol steps on the 15th, at first as part of a peaceful tea party event, then escalating into harsher rhetoric, and eventually threats of violence. On April 14, he wrote: “Tea Parties: And Poot Gingrich wants to stand in the limelight. He is a NWO operative,” referring to former Republican House Speaker and tea party favorite Newt Gingrich, and accusing him of being an “operative” for the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990). Towards midnight of April 14, Hayden begins the following series of posts: “Maybe it’s time to die. Let’s see if I can video record the Highway Patrol at the entrance to the Oklahoma State Capitol.” “While trying to inform them of Oath Keepers” (and links to the Oath Keepers blog). “And post it on the internet. Since i live on this sorry f_cking state,that is as good a place as ANY to die and start a WAR. WEshallsee.” “I WISH I had someone to watch my back with MY camera.” “AND, no matter WHAT happens, to post it on the internet IMMEDIATELY, AND send it to Alex Jones!!!!!!!!!!!!” (referring to radio talk show host Alex Jones). “Damnit!” “Alas… WE SHALL see the TRUTH about this sorry f_cking state!!!!!!!” After a few more posts, Dyer begins posting direct threats of violence (later removed from the Twitter account, but presented in the FBI affidavit). “The WAR wWIL start on the stepes of the Oklahoma State Capitol. I will cast the first stone. In the meantime, I await the police.” “START THE KILLING NOW! I am wiling to be the FIRST DEATH! I Await the police. They will kill me in my home.” “After I am killed on the Capitol Steps like REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!” “I really don’ give a sh_t anymore. Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the on the State Capitol steps.” Hayden is taken into custody before he can go to the Capitol building, and arrested for transmitting threats to kill or injure people using interstate communication tools over the Internet. FBI agent Michael Puskas confirms that Dyer posted under the moniker “CitizenQuasar,” and says Dyer also has MySpace and Blogger accounts under similar monikers. Wired magazine says it “appears to be [the] first criminal prosecution to stem from posts on the microblogging site,” and calls Dyer’s MySpace page “a breathtaking gallery of right-wing memes about the ‘New World Order,’ gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama’s covert use of television hypnosis, among many others.” Dyer will be arraigned on April 16 and ordered released to a halfway house, a move the Associated Press reports as suggesting “the magistrate judge does not consider him a genuine threat.” [Wired News, 4/24/2009; Associated Press, 4/26/2009] Posters on the conservative blog Free Republic, commenting on Hayden’s arrest, label him a “leftist” who intended to kill tea party protesters, a contention they say is proven by Hayden’s vows to seek revenge for the government’s execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). One poster writes: “Hayden appears to be one of those mixtures of far out ideologies. On one hand he seems to support nazism but accused Obama of using mind control.” [Free Republic, 4/24/2009]

Charles Dyer after being detained by Oklahoma law enforcement authorities. [Source: Duncan Herald]Ex-Marine Charles Dyer is arrested on child rape and federal weapons charges. Dyer, a declared member of the “Oath Keepers” organization (see March 9, 2009 and March 2010), is charged with raping a seven-year-old girl at his home in Marlow, Oklahoma. When Stephens County deputies search his home, they find a Colt M-203 grenade launcher they believe was stolen from a California military base in 2006. Dyer’s arrest causes a split among members of the far-right “Patriot” movement, with militia members rallying behind Dyer and organizations such as the Oath Keepers distancing themselves from supporting him. Dyer was charged with making disloyal statements when, as an active-duty Marine, he posted what Mother Jones calls “incendiary videos on YouTube” under the moniker “July4Patriot.” Wearing a skull mask that partially obscured his face, he called for armed, violent resistance against the US government, railed against the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990), and invited viewers to join him at his Oklahoma home for military training, at what he said the government “will call… a terrorist training camp.” Dyer was acquitted and continued making video protests and exhortations without the mask, becoming popular among fringe militia elements. In one video made after his discharge from service, he announced his intention of becoming a “domestic terrorist.” Dyer has been a visible and outspoken member of the Oath Keepers since the organization’s first rally, and for a time he was considered an Oath Keeper spokesman, and with Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes’s blessing represented the group at a July 4, 2010 tea party rally. He often featured Oath Keeper logos and materials on his YouTube videos, and wore an Oath Keeper sweatshirt on some of them. Following Dyer’s arrest, Rhodes removes Dyer’s postings and material from the Oath Keepers Web site, and denies Dyer had any official connection with the group. Rhodes insists that Dyer never paid his $30 dues to become a member, though the organization has always said it costs nothing to join, and says he asked Dyer to stop identifying himself as an Oath Keeper after he learned that Dyer was trying to recruit for an Oklahoma militia. A blogger for American Resistance Radio calls Rhodes “beyond cowardly” and labels Dyer the “1st POW of the 2nd American Revolution.” On the Oath Keepers site, a Marine from Arizona speculates that the charges against Dyer could be the start of a false campaign to arrest and detain American patriots. But if the allegations are true, he writes, “may he rot in hell.” [Duncan Banner, 1/16/2010; Mother Jones, 1/22/2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 1/22/2010; TPMMuckraker, 1/22/2010; Mother Jones, 3/2010]

Conservative author Jonathan Kay covers the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee (see February 4-6, 2010), and publishes a column that states: “[I]t has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It’s more John Birch than John Adams.” Kay, who is writing a book on alternative theories about the 9/11 attacks, is astonished at the breadth and depth of the conspiracy theories that many tea parties, and tea party organizations, seem to embrace. The “villain list,” as Kay calls it, includes banks; bailed-out corporations; Republican Party leaders such as RNC chairman Michael Steele, whom they feel ignore the tea parties; colleges and universities; CNN’s Anderson Cooper; Fox News pundits like Bill O’Reilly who scorn them; “big media” outlets such as the Washington Post; and even moviemakers like James Cameron, who make movies that they feel contain “hidden messages” to fool Americans into supporting gay rights, cuts in military spending, and the like. The central figure in their net of conspiracy theories, Kay writes, is Barack Obama (see May 7, 2010). The convention is opened by anti-environmentalist Steve Malloy, who accuses Obama and his administration of working to control every aspect of Americans’ lives, from the colors of their cars to the temperatures to which they set their home heating units, all to comply with what Malloy says is the United Nations’s greenhouse gas-reduction program. According to Malloy: “Obama isn’t a US socialist. He’s an international socialist. He envisions a one-world government.” Kay is particularly concerned that, based on what he hears at the convention, the tea parties are affiliating themselves with far-right, white supremacist ideology such as that espoused by the John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011). They seem particularly enamored of the “New World Order” conspiracy (see September 11, 1990, November 5, 2008, March 17, 2009, March 18, 2009, March 24, 2009, March 24, 2009, and April 6, 2009). A convention speaker, former judge Roy Moore, tells his listeners that Obama intends to station “a UN guard in every house[hold].” Radio host Alex Jones is a favorite among tea partiers, Kay writes; Jones claims that Obama’s presidency is a plot by the leaders of the New World Order to “con the Amercican people into accepting global slavery.” One conventioneer tells Kay that Washington liberals “engineered the financial crash so they could destroy the value of the US dollar, pay off America’s debts with worthless paper, and then create a new currency called the Amero that would be used in a newly created ‘North American Currency Union’ with Canada and Mexico.” Shortly thereafter, the convention shows a “documentary” entitled Generation Zero that makes similar claims. The claims that Obama is a Kenyan who is ineligible to be president is a favorite theory, Kay writes; WorldNetDaily publisher Joseph Farah (see August 1, 2008 and After, December 5, 2008, May 28, 2009, July 21, 2009, and August 1-4, 2009) tells the crowd that the circumstances of Obama’s birth are more mysterious than the birth of Jesus Christ, and says, “My dream is that if Barack Obama seeks reelection in 2012 that he won’t be able to go to any city, any city, any town in America without seeing signs that ask, ‘Where’s the birth certificate?’” (see May 18, 2009). Kay concludes: “Perhaps the most distressing part of all is that few media observers bothered to catalog these bizarre, conspiracist outbursts, and instead fixated on Sarah Palin’s Saturday night keynote address. It is as if, in the current overheated political atmosphere, we all simply have come to expect that radicalized conservatives will behave like unhinged paranoiacs when they collect in the same room. That doesn’t say much for the state of the right in America. The tea partiers’ tricornered hat is supposed to be a symbol of patriotism and constitutional first principles. But when you take a closer look, all you find is a helmet made of tin foil.” [National Tea Party Convention, 2/2010; Newsweek, 2/8/2010]

Richard Mack speaks to a tea party rally in Post Falls, Idaho, in November 2009. [Source: Rajah Bose / New York Times]The New York Times publishes a large front-page story on America’s “tea party” movement. The report is written by staff reporter David Barstow, who researched the story for five months, first joining a bus tour by the Tea Party Express (see August 28, 2009) and then staying for the month of October in and around Spokane, Washington, to interview tea party members and others, such as white supremacist militia members, who have some affiliation with tea party organizations. The first person he mentions is a retiree named Pam Stout, who once worked for federal housing programs and is now aghast at the government’s handling of the economic crisis. She told Barstow that one day “she awoke to see Washington as a threat, a place where crisis is manipulated—even manufactured—by both parties to grab power.” She went to a tea party rally, then a meeting of the Sandpoint Tea Party Patriots, where she surprised herself by nominating herself for president. Under her leadership, the Sandpoint group joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project (see March 13, 2009 and After), the extremist, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), and the Oath Keepers (see March 9, 2009 and March 2010), a far-right militia organization. Stout told Barstow that her family worries that she has become enmeshed in a group of conspiracy theorists and ad hoc revolutionaries, but she said she has never felt more engaged. [New York Times, 2/15/2010; Columbia Journalism Review, 2/18/2010]Increasing Tilt towards Anti-Government Militia Ideology - Barstow writes that many tea party members are like Stout, with an inclination to conservative anti-government politics, but also with a fear of eventual government tyranny that has driven them to join the movement. “These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the tea party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement,” he writes, “a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates, and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve. Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show.” Many tea partiers hold former President Bush and President Obama in equal contempt, holding them jointly responsible for deliberately undermining the Constitution and the free market system “for the benefit of a shadowy international network of wealthy elites” (see February 4-8, 2010). Coalition groups like Friends of Liberty are “forming hybrid entities of tea parties and groups rooted in the Patriot ethos. A fear of government tyranny is one of the most common ideological threads running through virtually all tea party organizations.” Targeting Republicans as Well as Democrats - Barstow continues: “These coalitions are not content with simply making the Republican Party more conservative. They have a larger goal—a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment, starting with Senator John McCain” and other Republicans whom they consider part of the “government conspiracy” to destroy democracy. While tea parties routinely target Democrats in elections, they are also targeting more moderate Republicans, especially those who support ideas or legislation that they feel is part of the “conspiracy.” Republicans who supported the government bailouts of large corporations are being targeted, as are those who support global warming legislation or who have shown any impetus to work with the White House or with Congressional Democrats (see January 29, 2010). Barstow notes that the tea party movement is anything but homogenous and rigidly organized: “It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure.” Some groups are “essentially appendages of the local Republican Party,” but many are not. However, many of the beliefs espoused by individual tea partiers tend to be reflected in most groups. Not all believe that Obama wants to impose a dictatorship, with or without McCain’s help, but many do. The frustration expressed by Stout in the economy and the government’s response to it is echoed throughout tea party groups in every state. Turning to Radical Ideologies and Conspiracy Theorists - One of the tea partiers’ favorite thinkers is Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck (see March 29, 2009). Beck’s often-revisionist, often-inaccurate opinions led many tea partiers to read the Federalist Papers (or, more often, right-wing blogs about the Federalist Papers), conspiracist “exposes” of the Federal Reserve, and the novels of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Online resources tailored for tea party organizations provide a wealth of what Barstow calls “radical critiques of Washington.” Two of the primary sites are ResistNet.com and InfoWars, both of which combine far-right ideology with a plethora of conspiracy theories covering everything from 9/11 and the Federal Reserve to the New World Order (see September 11, 1990). Some tea partiers are joining with militia groups, or forming their own, and making stockpiles of food, gold, and weaponry to prepare for the end of civilization. Many tea party leaders say they believe that a return to a strict adherence to constitutional law would solve most of the nation’s problems, but many of them espouse a radical view of the Constitution, such as that delineated by radical Constitutional revisionist W. Cleon Skousen (first popularized among the tea party community by Beck—see 1963). Many want to completely do away with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the federal income tax, and most government agencies, all of which they say violate the Constitution. Some go even farther, advocating secession, states “nullfying” federal laws, and the formation of citizen militias. The tea parties in the Pacific Northwest, Barstow writes, have been shaped by influences such as libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) and by the sometimes-violent anti-government activism of northern Idaho (see Early 1970s, 1980-1982, 1983-1995, and February 15, 1995). The 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992), which occurred in nearby Idaho, is a touchstone for many tea partiers, just as it was for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see August 21-31, 1992). Many, but not all, tea party members and groups embrace the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama is not a natural American citizen. A favorite news blog, WorldNetDaily, routinely electrifies the movement by warning of new White House plans to build massive internment camps and stuff them with tea party members, or of plans to send waves of United Nations troops throughout the nation to confiscate Americans’ guns. ResistNet regularly warns that Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his own personal police force, and advises tea partiers to “grab their guns.” Tea partiers like Mary Johnson of New Mexico points to the Bush-era wiretapping scandal as proof that the government can, and is, preparing to bring democracy to an end. As the groups’ fear and contempt for the federal government grows, Barstow writes, they turn more frequently to “fringe” groups such as white supremacist, anti-government militias. In Indiana, a militia coalition called Defenders of Liberty is networking with tea party groups and other “Patriot” organizations throughout the state. Darin Stevens, the leader of the Spokane 9/12 project, told Barstow that before tuning in to Beck’s show, he had paid almost no attention to politics. After the recession hit and his personal financial structure started to collapse, he began watching Beck. “I had no clue that my country was being taken from me,” he explains. He began the Spokane chapter of Beck’s 9/12 project, and was astounded that 110 people attended the first meeting. Stevens now belongs to the Oath Keepers as well as the 9/12 Project. Spokane tea partier Leah Southwell became a convert after stumbling on Paul’s speeches on YouTube. Southwell turned from being a successful Mary Kay makeup sales representative to being a self-described member of “the uprising.” Southwell, through Paul, is now fully supportive of the Patriot ideology, and holds as evident truth a number of conspiracy theories involving the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. “The more you know, the madder you are,” she told Barstow. “I mean when you finally learn what the Federal Reserve is!” Southwell is now a local official with the John Birch Society. She says that the affiliation between organizations like the JBS and the tea parties will continue to grow: “Most of these people [tea partiers] are just waking up.” Former car salesman Richard Mack, a longtime militia supporter who co-wrote Ruby Ridge survivor Randy Weaver’s memoirs, is a favorite speaker at tea party events. “People just do not trust any of this,” Mack told Barstow. “It’s not just the fringe people anymore. These are just ordinary people—teachers, bankers, housewives.” Amorphous Structure - Local tea party groups often join, in one degree or another, one of several competing national tea party organizations such as ResistNet or the Tea Party Express, most of which are organized, staffed, and funded by conservative lobbying groups such as FreedomWorks (see February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009 and After, February 27, 2009, March 2, 2009, March 13, 2009 and After, April 14, 2009, and April 15, 2009) or Americans for Prosperity (see Late 2004, February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009 and After, and April 2009 and After). Some tea party groups have been joined by, or in some cases overrun by, other groups, from “birthers” to militias, supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, pro-gun groups, and the sovereign states movement. Many coalitions such as Friends of Liberty were formed in opposition to what leaders called the endless “hijack attempts” by state and county Republican Parties. Dann Selle of the Official Tea Party of Spokane told Barstow, “We had to stand our ground, I’ll be blunt.” Support from Elected Politicians - Rick Perry, the governor of Texas and a possible 2012 Republican candidate for president, has joined with Texas tea parties in supporting the state’s secession from the United States. Nevada Republican Joe Heck, who ran for Congress in 2008, attacked both parties for moving the nation towards “socialist tyranny” and solicited tea party support at a rally in Las Vegas. Indiana Republican Richard Behney, running for the US Senate, told tea party supporters that if the 2010 elections did not turn out to his liking: “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I’m serious about that, and I bet you are, too.” [New York Times, 2/15/2010]

Private Lee Pray, a member of the Oath Keepers. His finger tattoo spells out ‘THOR.’ [Source: Mother Jones]The progressive news magazine Mother Jones publishes a detailed examination of the Oath Keepers (see March 9, 2009), one of the fastest-growing “patriot” groups on the far right. The group was founded in April 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer who once served as an aide to libertarian US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX). According to author Justine Sharrock, it has become “a hub in the sprawling anti-Obama movement that includes Tea Partiers, Birthers, and 912ers.” (Sharrock is referring to the burgeoning “tea party” movement, the people who believe President Obama is not an American citizen (see August 1, 2008 and After and October 8-10, 2008), and the “9/12” organization formed by lobbying organization FreedomWorks and Fox News host Glenn Beck—see March 13, 2009 and After.) Beck, MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan (see May 28, 2009, June 20, 2009, and July 16, 2009), and CNN host Lou Dobbs have publicly praised the organization. In December 2009, a grassroots summit organized by the Oath Keepers drew lawmakers such as US Representatives Phil Gingrey (R-GA) and Paul Broun (R-GA). Sharrock’s profile is based on research and interviews with Rhodes, other Oath Keeper leaders, and ordinary members such as Private Lee Pray, who is stationed at Fort Drum, New York. Group Made Up of Uniformed Citizens - What sets the group apart from others on the far-right fringe is that its membership is restricted to US citizens in uniform—soldiers, police officers, and veterans. At its ceremonies, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution, but then go a step further, vowing to disobey “unconstitutional” orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government. Pray says he knows of five fellow Oath Keepers at Fort Drum. Preparing for Tyranny, Martial Law - He and other members are actively recruiting, arguing that under Obama, the US government is turning increasingly tyrannical and must be opposed, violently if need be. Pray says that many Oath Keepers had problems with some government policies under President Bush, but those reservations have grown with Obama’s ascension to power. Rhodes tells Sharrock: “Too many conservatives relied on Bush’s character and didn’t pay attention. Only now, with Obama, do they worry and see what has been done. Maybe you said, ‘I trusted Bush to only go after the terrorists.’ But what do you think can happen down the road when they say, ‘I think you are a threat to the nation?’” Pray, like many members, believes it will be a year at most before Obama declares martial law, perhaps under the pretext of a natural disaster or another 9/11-level terror attack, and begin detaining citizens en masse and banning interstate travel. Another Oath Keeper advises Sharrock to prepare a “bug out” bag with 39 items including gas masks, ammunition, and water purification tablets, so that she will be prepared “when the sh_t hits the fan.” Pray and his friends have a “fortified bunker” at one of their member’s parents’ home in rural Idaho, where they have stashed survival gear, generators, food, and plenty of weapons. If need be, they say, they will attack their fellow soldiers. Pray describes himself as both a “birther” and a “truther,” believing that Obama is an illegitimate president installed by a government that launched the 9/11 attacks on its own soil to drive the country further down the road towards tyranny. Pray has suffered demotion for a drinking problem, and was denied deployment to Iraq when he injured his knees in a fall. Right now his job involves operating and maintaining heavy equipment on base, and he is listed currently as “undeployable.” He and his fellow Oath Keepers on base spend their free time researching what they call the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) and conspiracies about detention camps. Pray is one of the few active-duty members who will agree to have his name made public; Rhodes encourages active-duty soldiers and police officers to hide their membership in the group, saying a group with large numbers of anonymous members can instill in its adversaries the fear of the unknown—a “great force multiplier,” he calls it. Pray worries that the CIA is monitoring his phone calls and insists that unmarked black cars follow him when he drives. A fellow Fort Drum Oath Keeper who only allows his first name of Brandon to be used, and who is also “undeployable” due to his own injuries, says that the off-limits areas of Fort Drum contain concentration camps. Sharrock notes that the soldiers’ behavior might be considered “paranoid,” but writes, “Then again, when you’re an active-duty soldier contemplating treason, some level of paranoia is probably sensible.” Stewart Rhodes - Rhodes, a Yale graduate and constitutional lawyer, is working on a book currently titled We the Enemy: How Applying the Laws of War to the American People in the War on Terror Threatens to Destroy Our Constitutional Republic. He is an Army veteran who was honorably discharged after injuring his spine in a parachute jump, and worked for a time supervising interns in Ron Paul’s Congressional office. He briefly practiced law in Montana, has worked as a sculptor and a firearms instructor, and writes a gun-rights column for SWAT magazine. He describes himself as a libertarian, a staunch constitutionalist, and a devout Christian. He decided to abandon electoral politics in 2008 after Paul’s presidential bid failed, and turned instead to grassroots organizing. In college, he became fascinated with the idea that had German soldiers and police refused to follow orders in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler could have been stopped. In early 2008, he read a letter in SWAT magazine declaring that “the Constitution and our Bill of Rights are gravely endangered” and that service members, veterans, and police “is where they will be saved, if they are to be saved at all!” Rhodes responded with a column predicting a future President Hillary (“Hitlery”) Clinton turning the US into a despotism while dressed in her “Chairman Mao signature pantsuit.” He asked readers if they intended to follow this “dominatrix-in-chief,” hold militia members as enemy combatants, disarm citizens, and shoot all resisters. If “a police state comes to America, it will ultimately be by your hands,” he wrote. You had better “resolve to not let it happen on your watch.” Shortly thereafter, he set up a blog he called “Oath Keepers,” asking for testimonials from soldiers and veterans, and began gaining popularity. Military officers offered assistance. A Marine Corps veteran invited Rhodes to speak at a local tea party event. Paul campaigners provided strategic advice. In March 2009, Rhodes attended a rally staged by a pro-militia group, and in front of the crowd of some 400 participants, officially launched the Oath Keepers movement (see March 9, 2009). Buchanan and Beck have praised Rhodes, with Buchanan predicting that he “is headed for cable stardom.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars.com has repeatedly featured Rhodes and the Oath Keepers on his radio talk show. Attracts Attention of Anti-Hate Organizations - The Oath Keepers has come to the attention of anti-hate organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which have cited the group in their reports on rising anti-government extremism. Rhodes has accused the SPLC of trying “to lump us in with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and of course make the insinuation that we’re the next McVeigh,” referring to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Author David Neiwert, an expert on right-wing groups, tells Sharrock that it would be a mistake to term them another amalgamation of “right-wing crackpots” or “extremist nimrods,” as other press outlets have done. “[T]he reality is a lot of them are fairly intelligent, well-educated people who have complex worldviews that are thoroughly thought out,” Neiwert says. Neiwert and Sharrock tie Rhodes’s message to the much earlier views expressed by members of the now-defunct Posse Comitatus (see 1969), and note that the last reemergence of this brand of rhetoric took place during the last time a Democrat, Bill Clinton, was in the White House. Today, groups like the Oath Keepers use the Internet, particularly Facebook and YouTube, and cable news networks, to connect with like-minded citizens around the world. “The underlying sentiment is an attack on government dating back to the New Deal and before,” Neiwert says. “Ron Paul has been a significant conduit in recent years, but nothing like Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann [R-MN] and Sarah Palin (see October 10, 2008)—all of whom share that innate animus.” While Rhodes and most Oath Keepers say they will only begin active disobedience under the delineated circumstances laid out by the group, some members have gone down their own paths of violence. Oath Keeper Daniel Knight Hayden set off a controversy last April 15 with a barrage of messages on Twitter stating his intention to “START THE KILLING NOW!” by engaging in a gun battle at the Oklahoma State Capitol and urging other Oath Keepers to join him (see April 14-15, 2009). Rhodes denounced Hayden, but Neiwert notes that Rhodes’s inflammatory and inciteful rhetoric can have what he calls “an unhinging effect” on people inclined toward violent action. “It puts them in a state of mind of fearfulness and paranoia, creating so much anger and hatred that eventually that stuff boils over.” In January, ex-Marine and Oath Keeper spokesman Charles Dyer, who beat a treason charge for advocating armed resistance to the government, was arrested on charges of raping a 7-year-old girl, and authorities found stolen military weaponry at his home; some militia groups have hailed Dyer as “the first POW of the second American Revolution,” but Rhodes removed information about him from the organization’s Web sites and now denies he was ever a member (see January 21, 2010). Rhodes says he and his Web staff are “overwhelmed” with the need to delete messages encouraging racism and violence from their blog, and recently he shut down one Internet forum because of members’ attempts to use it to recruit for militia organizations. Chip Berlet of the watchdog group Political Research Associates and an expert on far-right movements equates Rhodes’s rhetoric to yelling fire in a crowded theater. “Promoting these conspiracy theories is very dangerous right now because there are people who will assume that a hero will stop at nothing.” What will happen, he adds, “is not just disobeying orders but harming and killing.” Rhodes acknowledges that to follow through on his rhetoric could be risky, and reminds Sharrock that freedom “is not neat or tidy, it’s messy.” Gold Standards, Muslim Rights, and Treasonous Federal Institutions - During a recent meeting at a North Las Vegas casino, Sharrock took part in discussions of whether Muslim citizens had rights under the Constitution, why the Federal Reserve was a treasonous institution, why the government should be run under Biblical law and a gold standard, and how abortion-rights advocates are part of a eugenics plan targeting Christians. The group takes no official stance on the US’s war on terror or its foreign engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a recent Oath Keeper member who promoted his dual membership in the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) on the Oath Keepers blog had his post removed by Rhodes, who called the IVAW a “totalitarian” and “communist” organization. Expanding Membership - Rhodes says the group has at least one chapter in each of the 50 states, and claims the group has some 29,000 members, not counting the ones who keep their membership off the computer lists. Volunteers are preparing a large “outreach” to soldiers serving overseas. The organization has worked hard to become a staple of tea party events, and tells tea partiers that bringing guns to those events reminds participants of their constitutional rights. The organization has made strong connections with groups such as the Constitution Party and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, and national figures such as Ralph Reed, the former director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, and Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America. Elected officials such as Broun, Gingrey, Bachmann, and Steve King (R-IA) have expressed their interest in sponsoring legislation crafted by Oath Keeper leaders. [Mother Jones, 3/2010]

A Hutaree logo depicted on a shoulder patch. The initials CCR stand for ‘Colonial Christian Republic.’ [Source: BBC]Nine members of the “Hutaree,” a radical-right Christian militia organization, are charged with conspiring to kill police officers and wage war against the US. The FBI has arrested the nine members—eight men and one women—from locations throughout the Midwest, and are still searching for a tenth member, and charge them with “seditious conspiracy” and other crimes. The FBI alleges that the Hutaree members planned to kill a police officer in Michigan and then stage a second attack on the funeral, using landmines and roadside bombs or IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The arrests come after an 18-month investigation and a series of FBI raids on properties in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, after concluding that the group was planning a reconnaissance exercise. Attorney General Eric Holder says: “The indictment… outlines an insidious plan by anti-government extremists to murder a law enforcement officer in order to lure police from across the nation to the funeral where they would be attacked with explosive devices. Thankfully, this alleged plot has been thwarted and a severe blow has been dealt to a dangerous organisation that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States.” [CNN, 3/28/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 3/29/2010; BBC, 3/30/2010; Newsweek, 4/12/2010] The nine arrested are David Brian Stone of Clayton, Michigan, the leader of the group; David Brian Stone Jr. of Adrian, Michigan; Joshua Matthew Stone of Clayton; Tina Mae Stone of Clayton; Joshua John Clough of Blissfield, Michigan; Michael David Meeks of Manchester, Michigan; Kristopher T. Sickles of Sandusky, Ohio; Jacob J. Ward of Huron, Ohio; and Thomas W. Piatek of Hammond, Indiana. The FBI recovers 46 guns, two .50-caliber rifles, and 13,000 rounds of ammunition from Piatek’s home. All are denied bail in federal court. [Indiana Post-Tribune, 4/4/2010]FBI Alerted of 'Trouble' in 2009 - The indictment cites “a cooperating witness and an undercover FBI agent”; the Detroit News reports that one of the nine defendants, through her lawyer, says she believes a member of another militia group reported the Hutaree’s plans to the FBI. [Christian Science Monitor, 3/31/2010] It will later emerge that in 2009, residents of Adrian, Michigan, contacted the FBI over their concerns that Stone was planning something violent. Even local militia members were worried, and one militia member decided to infiltrate the group on behalf of the FBI. In the fall of 2009, the FBI learned that the Hutarees were building bombs, and the bureau sent its own undercover agent inside the group. The undercover agent actually offered to make the bombs; senior FBI agent Andrew Arena says that the benefit of that offer was in placing the FBI in charge of the explosives. “We were very fortunate to be able to insert an individual who was able to kind of take that role,” Arena says. “It certainly let me sleep a little better at night.” The agent went to meetings with surveillance devices to make audio recordings of the proceedings, and taped a February 2010 conversation in which Stone declared that he was sure local police “would fight right alongside some Chinese trooper. Heck, yeah. It’s all about power. It’s about the authority. They see us as the little people.” Stone and the other members of his group believe that the US government is planning on using foreign troops to impose martial law and tyranny on American citizens. During the same conversation, in which Stone read a speech he planned to give at an upcoming militia gathering in Kentucky, Stone said: “Now, we need to quit playing this game with these elitist terrorists and actually get serious, because this war will come whether we are ready or not. A war of this magnitude will not be easy. But like the rattlesnake on the Gadsden flag, we have rattled and warned the new world order (see September 11, 1990). Now it’s time to strike and take our nation back.” Arena says that while Stone has the constitutional right to say such things, “when you start taking action towards that government,” a citizen crosses the line into conspiracy to commit a crime. “In this case, we’re defining it as they started to plan how they were going to ignite the war.” When another Hutaree member asked for the help of a local militia headed by David Servino in building bombs and planning attacks, Servino says, “[w]e talked about it, and we decided as a group to go to the State Police Department—this local here—and talk to them, tell them what little information we had.” A day after Servino’s group informed the state police, the FBI began making its arrests. [National Public Radio, 4/12/2010]Extremist, Violent Ideology - A Hutaree Web site shows video footage of military-style training exercises and describes the members as “Christian warriors.” The site tells visitors that the Hutaree are preparing to defend themselves upon the arrival of the Antichrist, “for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.… The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it.” The FBI describes the Hutaree as an “anti-government extremist organization” advocating violence against the police in its indictment of the members; the group perceives the police as an arm of the US government [CNN, 3/28/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 3/29/2010; BBC, 3/30/2010] , which it calls ZOG—the “Zionist Occupied Government.” There is some dispute in the media as to the origin of the name “Hutaree.” One source believes it may originate from the word “Hutriel,” which translates to “rod of God.” Hutriel is one of the seven angels of punishment and helps in the “punishment of the 10 nations,” according to tradition. [Basil and Spice (.com), 4/6/2010] They label the police “the Brotherhood.” According to the Michigan Hutaree theology, which they call “the doctrine of the Hutaree,” former NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana is the Antichrist. The Hutaree’s exalted commander is called a “radok”; deputies and lieutenants are known as “boromanders” and “zulifs.” [Newsweek, 4/12/2010] Stone’s ex-fiancee, Andrea March, recalls Stone as a “Ron Paul fanatic,” referring to Ron Paul (R-TX) the libertarian House member whom many see as an ideological “father” of many “tea party” organizations. Appearing on Fox News, March tells an interviewer that Stone is a fanatical Paul supporter who feared that President Obama intended to take away his guns. “When Obama took the presidency is when he lost it because he was a Ron Paul fanatic,” she says. Asked what Paul has to do with Stone’s thinking and actions, she replies: “To tell you the truth I don’t know. I never really understood why Ron Paul was so much different, but [Stone] thought he could get away with anything and he wanted more freedoms than what he had and he was trying to do it through the violence.… [H]e clearly believed in guns and having them and he didn’t think. He didn’t want to have a driver’s license, he didn’t want to fill out any census papers. He wanted to own guns unregistered.” [Crooks and Liars, 3/30/2010]Leader, Group Well Known for Violent Expressions - The group leader, Stone, is called “Captain Hutaree” by his colleagues, or, cryptically, “RD.” The indictment names Stone as the “principal leader” of the organization. According to media reports, Stone has a strong affinity for the most violent of the far-right fringes of the American militia movement. His first wife, Donna Stone, tells reporters she left him because he “got carried away.” Federal authorities say that he researched how to build IEDs and roadside bombs on the Internet, and emailed diagrams of the devices to someone he believed could actually build such devices. And one neighbor, Phyllis Bruger, says she and others learned not to “mess with” Stone and his group. They liked to conduct “military exercises” and shoot guns, usually wearing camouflage outfits. “Everybody knew they were militia,” she says. Donna Stone tells reporters: “It started out as a Christian thing. You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far. He dragged a lot of people with him. When he got carried away, when he went from handguns to big guns, I was done.” Her son, Joshua Stone, who was adopted by David Stone, was arrested with David Stone after helping him gather materials necessary for making the bombs. Donna Stone adds: “He dragged a lot of innocent people down with him. It started to get worse when they were talking about the world’s gonna end in the Bible.” The indictment says, “Stone taught other Hutaree members how to make and use explosive devices intending or knowing that the information would be used to further a crime of violence.” Too Far for Other Militia Groups - Other militia organizations in Michigan kept their distance from the local Hutaree, says Jim Gulliksen of the Lenawee Volunteer Michigan Militia (the same group that Servino founded and that informed police of the Hutaree plot). “I’ve met him,” Gulliksen says. “He’s an opinionated man who likes to share those opinions. The Hutaree is a nationwide group, but I have met a couple of the members here, and I can say they all belong to one specific church. Our concern is the protection of our nation. Religion appears to be a big part of what they are doing.” Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center says the SPLC is aware of two Hutaree chapters, one in Utah and Stone’s chapter in Michigan. She notes Hutaree has more than 350 friends on its MySpace page, dozens of whom are members of other militias, and says that Stone was planning to attend a summit in Kentucky with other militias next month. “Hutaree is not an isolated crew,” she notes. Beinrich says that Stone and his colleagues see “the end of times” occurring today: “They have extreme antigovernment beliefs. They have rage and hatred for the federal government. They fear being put in FEMA concentration camps. They’re really paramilitary organizations.” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/29/2010] William Flatt, a founder of the Indiana Militia, is also aware of Stone and the Hutaree. He is not surprised at the arrests. “We had a strong suspicion that groups like this would be getting some rather substantial bad press fairly quickly,” Flatt tells a reporter. Flatt says that unlike the Hutaree, his and most militia groups support and defend the US Constitution. “The whole militia movement is supposed to be a goal-line defense against tyranny,” Flatt says. “If all else fails, the people still have the means to shoehorn [the government] back into the constitutional mold.” The Michigan Hutaree’s plans to kill police officers, Flatt says, is abhorrent to his group, and he warns that it is a mistake to lump all American militias in with extremist, violent groups such as Stone’s. Flatt disliked Stone’s views, which he says focus on his interpretation of Christianity and also express bigotry against others. However, he is skeptical of the charges against some of Stone’s followers. “The charges they’re putting out there, it only ends one way,” he says. “You might as well put yourself in the Alamo; nobody wants to do that.” [Indiana Post-Tribune, 4/4/2010] Arena says that while Stone’s group might have considered itself a part of a larger, sympathetic coterie of like-minded organizations, it was mistaken. “These guys may have felt in their mind that they were a part of this brotherhood,” he says. “The reality is I don’t think they’ve got a whole lot of support.” [Associated Press, 4/2/2010]Lawyer Insists No Crime Committed - Stone’s lawyer, William Swor, says there is no evidence the group ever took steps to implement any of the alleged plots. Instead, he says, the group is being persecuted over the exercise of constitutionally protected speech. “This is still America and people can say whatever they want,” he says. [Newsweek, 4/12/2010]

Christian Science Monitor reporter Mark Guarino delves into some of the reasons why Michigan has such a high concentration of militia, anti-government, and other extremist groups within its borders. The analysis comes in the aftermath of the arrest of nine members of the Hutaree, a violent Christian group whom the FBI says were planning on murdering one or more police officers (see March 27-30, 2010). Michigan has 47 known militia or “patriot” groups, second in the nation behind Texas (which contains 57 such groups). These numbers come from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit civil rights organization that tracks hate group activity. The SPLC says dozens of new militia and “patriot” groups have begun since the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president; between 2008 and 2009, the SPLC says, the number of groups throughout the country has grown from 149 to 512 (see March 2, 2010). The Michigan branch of the Hutaree is one of the most violent and far-right of these groups, the SPLC says, but Michigan and the entire Upper Midwest has become a hotbed of “patriot” activity. Chip Berlet, an analyst for Political Research Associates, says: “There are a number of regional factors that, over time and at various moments, helped the militia movement take hold in different parts of the country. It certainly has emerged strongly in the upper Midwest.” Indiana has 21 such groups, Wisconsin and Ohio 13 each, and Illnois 10, according to SPLC figures. Michigan has a long history of such activity, according to SPLC official Heidi Beirich. Many of Michigan’s most prominent militia groups, including the Michigan Militia, came into being during the term in office of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. The Michigan Militia gained notoriety when the media found ties between it and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994, January 1995, 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995, and April 21, 1995). Militia activity in Michigan dwindled during the Bush presidency, but with Obama as president, has risen sharply. The Hutaree members were able to attract some members of less openly violent groups such as the Michigan Militia, though spokesmen for that group say that their organization rejects the Christian survivalist doctrine of the Hutaree. Beirich says, “The roots of militia activity are there [in Michigan], so if you want to organize something you know who to call.” Experts say a combination of factors contribute to the rise in militias: a troubled economy, changing roles within the traditional family structure, and shifts in the racial makeup of the country’s population. Berlet notes that shared anxiety among lower-to-middle-class people is often a catalyst for generating conspiracy theories, which have the potency to provoke people to take up arms and commit violence. “The candidacy of Obama—when it looked to become serious—prompted a lot of anxiety, and the anxiety continued to rise up to the inauguration,” says Berlet. “This is really getting out of hand,” Berlet says. “It’s a serious problem when people decide the solution to political problems lies in arming themselves and going underground.” He concludes: “While you can look at the Republicans and right wing and say, ‘You let things go too far,’ the Democrats use very demonizing language and aren’t interested in a policy debate, either. They’ve been interested in bashing the Republicans and right wing as crazy and ignorant. So it’s a mess.” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/30/2010] Former federal prosecutor Aitan Goelman, who helped convict McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombing, suggests that the true danger of groups like the Hutaree and other militias is not from the groups themselves, but from the risk of these groups’ inflammatory declarations and actions sparking violence from so-called “lone wolves,” who like McVeigh are not necessarily active members of any such groups, but whose actions go farther than most groups ever intend. Goelman notes that in 1995, a Democrat was president, just as today; Clinton pushed through a controversial federal assault weapons ban (see September 13, 1994) and Obama has successfully implemented an equally controversial health care reform package; and, both then and now, extremists on the right are warning of an impending government takeover. “On the edges” of political discourse today, Goelman says, “you have rhetoric that carries over to extreme factions.” He continues, “Anytime you have group-think and this churning of ridiculous ideas back and forth, eventually you’ll get someone like McVeigh who’s going to say, ‘I’m going to take the mantle of leadership and fire the shot heard around the world and start the second American revolution.’” McVeigh considered the Michigan Militia “too moderate” and himself as a “man of action” who wanted to go farther than these groups. “I think [his associations with militias] put a battery in the pack,” Goelman says. “Some of this is fantasy. I think the idea that it is kind of fun to talk about a UN tank on your front lawn and the New World Order (see September 11, 1990)… but when someone blows up a building and kills 19 kids in a day-care center, it’s not so glamorous anymore,” he says, referring to the Oklahoma City incident. “The reality of murdering innocent people ends up far less glorious than striking the blow.” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/31/2010]

Glenn Beck discusses the Tides Foundation during his Fox News broadcast. [Source: NewsRealBlog (.com)]Journalist John Hamilton publishes the results of a series of interviews with Byron Williams, who is charged with multiple counts of attempting to murder police officers from a shootout with Oakland, California, Highway Patrol officers (see July 18, 2010 and After). Williams has said that he targeted a progressive charitable foundation in San Francisco, the Tides Foundation, because of its liberal policies, and has said he intended to “start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.” Since his arrest, Williams has retained Hamilton to be his “media advocate.” Williams and Fox's Beck - Williams told Hamilton that his primary political influence and informational source is Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck. Williams had Hamilton watch specific broadcasts of Beck’s shows to glean information about what Williams describes as an intricate conspiracy between President Obama, liberal philanthropist George Soros (see August 8, 2006 and February 2007), Brazilian oil company Petrobras, and BP, the corporation responsible for triggering the Gulf oil disaster. Williams also cites right-wing pundit David Horowitz (see August 5, 2003 and November 30, 2004) and right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones (see July 24, 2009) as other influences. The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that Beck spoke 29 times about the Tides Foundation in the 18 months leading up to Williams’s shooting spree, sometimes at length; other pundits rarely mentioned the organization, if at all, during that same time period. Williams defends Beck, saying that the talk show host advocates non-violence and merely “confirm[ed]” his belief in the conspiracy. “Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence,” Williams told Hamilton. “He’ll never do anything… of this nature. But he’ll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need.” Beck, he says, is “like a schoolteacher on TV. You need to go back to June—June of this year, 2010—and look at all his programs from June, and you’ll see he’s been breaking open some of the most hideous corruption.” In that month, Beck advised his viewers to stop a Democratic-orchestrated “march towards Communism” by “shoot[ing]” Democrats such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “in the head (see June 9, 2010). Genesis of a Shootout - Williams moved to his childhood home in Groveland, California, in 2007 after serving a prison sentence for a 2001 bank robbery. Williams has an extensive criminal record, and has been convicted of assault, property destruction, hit-and-run, and drunken driving. He lived with his mother during that time, unable to find steady work, and growing increasingly depressed and fascinated with right-wing radio and television. His neighbor, Tom Funk, told Hamilton of Williams’s profanity-laden tirade on the night of November 4, 2008, after Obama won the presidency. He remembered Williams shouting what he calls racist, drunken threats after the news of Obama’s victory was announced, saying: “He was up there cussing and saying that America is not going right by having a black president. He was using words he shouldn’t be saying after 9/11, because it would have put him in jail. Threatening words towards the president.” In the days before and after the election, Funk said, Williams liked to listen to radio talk show host Michael Savage (see January 10, 2008, March 13, 2008, and November 10, 2008). Hamilton found transcripts of Savage’s radio broadcasts during that time; Savage held forth about the “bloodbath coming to America” should Obama be elected, and predicted that the nation was on “the verge of a Marxist revolution in the United States of America. You have a naked Marxist, America-hating, white-hating [Democratic] party—wing of the party—about to seize power. And you don’t even know it.” Hamilton then interviewed Williams’s mother Janice, who drives an SUV with “Palin 2012” bumperstickers on it. Williams’s mother told Hamilton that in phone calls and a letter to her, her son “basically said: ‘I’m sorry, I never intended to hurt anyone. I got really angry and lost my head.’” She said she did not believe her son would actually have attacked either the ACLU or the Tides Foundation. She also denied that her son shouted racial imprecations after Obama’s election, saying: “I read one account that he used the n-word. I don’t believe that. The neighbors told that to the media, but they just wove that out of whole cloth. I don’t care how loud anyone here gets, there’s no way anyone over there could have heard anything that far away. It’s just someone seeking publicity.” She said her son does not tolerate alcohol well, because he is partly “American Indian… [t]hat’s why he can’t drink.” The day of the shooting, she “found 18 or 20 beer bottles by the sink.” Her son is angry, she told Hamilton, because of “the federal government. And the shadow government that operates behind the scenes, manipulating things.” She said she agreed with many of her son’s concerns about government intrusion: “I believe in limited government. The government should be there solely for the purpose of protecting our borders. All the other stuff is add-ons. This whole Obamacare thing has everything to do with consolidating government. There’s no concern about the little people. Having said that, my hope was to retake the country peacefully, through the ballot box.” She denied that her son was influenced by Beck, Savage, or any other right-wing commentator, saying: “All the reporters who came out here last month were blaming what he did on Rush [Limbaugh], Glenn Beck, and the tea party. Why would you blame the messenger? If Glenn Beck tells us something, and everyone gets upset about it, why blame him?” She called the Tides Foundation “a money laundering scheme for the radical left that didn’t want their names attributed to what they were doing,” a charge first leveled by Beck. She did confirm that her son was a Beck fan: “Yes, he liked Glenn Beck, but he didn’t feel he went far enough. He’d take it only so far, but stopped short.” She added that almost everyone she had heard from after the shooting supported her son’s position: “I had only one hate call out of all the thousands of people who heard about this case. Most people have expressed support—not for the act, but for the frustration behind it.” Jailhouse Meetings - Hamilton talked to Williams in the visiting area of the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, twice over a period of two weeks. Williams told Hamilton that he worried about being portrayed as an “extremist,” and said he should probably not discuss “that incident”—the shooting—because of his pending criminal trial. Williams was loquacious about his political views; he said, “My big thing was the oil rig, the Deepwater Horizon,” referring to the immense BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “I’ve uncovered enough evidence to—I think in a court of law it could bring [BP CEO] Tony Hayward, Barack Obama, George Soros, and members of Halliburton indicted for treason.” Williams believes that the oil spill was deliberate, plotted by Soros. “It was a sabotage,” Williams explained. “Hayward and [Wall Street financial firm] Goldman Sachs sold their stock, which was depreciating, two weeks before the spill. Soros invested $1 billion of his own money into Petrobras. Soros has the Tides Foundation and the Tides fund. He funnels billions of donated dollars into the fund, which he uses for all kinds of nefarious activities.… Obama sent 2 billion of taxpayer dollars to Petrobras for deep water oil exploration, while holding a moratorium on deepwater exploration in the US. Once you see this pattern—it’s fishy stuff.… Halliburton, whose job was to seal the well—two days before the explosion, they bought an oil spill clean-up company.… When I saw the news was dropping the issue like a hot potato, I became infuriated.” He concluded: “The bottom line is that George Soros is the financier of Obama. And Obama has a clear agenda: First he did the health care reform. After that, it was all about energy. He wants to impose the worst tax ever conceived: a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions. Think of it. Even your breathing could be taxed, because you give off greenhouse gases. That’s why I did what I did. There are not a lot of people fighting back. I don’t see a response.” Williams evoked the Civil War by asking why Gulf Coast residents did not rise up in arms about what he says was a conspiracy to destroy their shoreline for Soros’s profit. “What ever happened to the spirit of the South, of the Confederacy in the Civil War?” Williams summed up the plot as he sees it: “What I see here is a plan to bring the country down.” Sources of Information - Asked where he gets his information, Williams responded: “Alex Jones. PrisonPlanet.com is his Web site. Also, DiscoverTheNetworks.” Hamilton identifies Williams’s sources: “Jones is a conspiracist and repeat Fox News guest who mingles dire warnings of the ‘New World Order’ (see September 11, 1990) with stories of government complicity in the 9/11 attacks. DiscoverTheNetworks is a Web site claiming to track ‘the individuals and organizations that make up the left.’ It’s run by David Horowitz, a former leftist who has reinvented himself as a right-wing propagandist.” Williams then named Beck as another major source of his information and said Beck is “like a schoolteacher” who uses his chalkboard to great effect. “I collect information on corruption,” Williams said. “I’ve been at it for some time.… Our media accepts the false reports and downplays the conspiracy theories.… A public that is aware of corruption can oppose the corruption. A public kept in the dark simply passes it by.” Fox News, Williams said, is the only television news outlet that is not “censored,” he said. “So perhaps Fox has broken away from the mold.” Aside from its presumably independent status, Williams added: “There’s only one conservative channel. That’s Fox. All the other ones are all liberal channels.” Williams stated that he watched Fox because of Beck, and not vice versa: “I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind. I said, well, nobody does this.” Williams told Hamilton to “go back to June—June of this year, 2010—and look at all his programs from June. And you’ll see he’s been breaking open some of the most hideous corruption. A year ago, I was watching him, and it was OK, he was all right, you know?… But now he’s getting it.” Williams said that he believes Beck knows more than he is willing to tell. Referring to the Gulf Oil spill, Williams said: “This is what he won’t do, Beck will not say it was a contracted hit. But he’ll give you every ounce of evidence you can possibly need to make that assumption yourself.… You see what I mean?… That’s why he downplays the 9/11 truthers. He talks bad about them.” Williams then retold some conspiracy theories that he apparently believes that Beck seems to dismiss, including the Alex Jones-propagated idea that the US government was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Of his various conspiratorial beliefs, he advised Hamilton: “Think like a conspiracy theorist. Except don’t use the word ‘theory.’ Because the conspiracies are not theories. The official report is the lie; the conspiracy is the truth.” Beck’s mission, Williams said, is to “expose” progressives and “leftists” who are endangering American democracy. Ties to Tides - Beck is the source from which Williams first learned about the Tides Foundation, which he believes is at the heart of the Soros/Obama plan to destroy America. Beck himself has said of the Tides: “The chalkboard was brought up… for the Tides Foundation. I think that might have been the first time we used it.” His efforts to “expose” Tides “was the first time that I really realized its success—Tides Foundation and ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Because you can map it all out. And I know that they make fun of me for it, but that’s—that’s the difference.… Tides was one of the hardest things that we ever tried to explain. And everyone told us that we couldn’t. It is the reason why the blackboard really became what the blackboard is. It is because I was trying to explain Tides and how all of this worked.” Beck has repeatedly, and falsely, labeled the organization as “George Soros’ Tides Foundation,” which he has suggested is part of a liberal plot to “create mass organizations to seize power.” Tides, he said, is a “shady organization” that funnels money to “some of the most extreme groups on the left.” Beck has asserted that Tides is “involved in some of the nastiest of the nasty.” In the 18 months preceding Williams’s shooting spree, Beck attacked Tides 29 times on his Fox show. [Media Matters, 10/11/2010]

A group of tea party-affiliated organizations, including the lobbying group Americans for Prosperity (see Late 2004), the Tea Party Patriots, the Heritage Foundation, the Buckeye Foundation, American Majority, and the far-right, extremst John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), hosts a two-day event called the “We the People Convention.” The event is designed to help raise money and awareness for Republican political candidates, in part through the auspices of the Ohio Citizens PAC. Some 88 area tea party groups in the Ohio Liberty Council are the local sponsors; the attendance is estimated at around 300 people. According to the organization’s Web site, “The purpose of the convention is to provide educational programs that will help all citizens participate in self governance as provided by the US and Ohio Constitutions by participating in the governance of their township, village, municipality, state, and country.” The convention includes “breakout sessions” that give information on “start[ing] your own Patriot group in your home town, or strengthen[ing] your existing group.” According to a report by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights’s Devin Burghart, the workshops advocate the dismantling of public education, Social Security, and Medicaid; the banning of labor unions; and voter suppression efforts against non-white voters. Burghart writes, “A hard look at this conference provides an invaluable window on the way the tea party movement works against even the most minimal efforts to promote the common good.” Many of the workshop presenters engage in what Burghart calls overtly racist jargon, including accusations that blacks who receive government assistance “have no souls” and President Obama is “not American.” Global warming is a fraud perpetuated by socialists to obtain control over private enterprise, one workshop asserts, with global warming advocates being compared to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Another hosted by John McManus of the JBS claims that the Federal Reserve system is a Communist front group, and calls for a return to a gold- and silver-based monetary system. McManus also leads workshops that claim American Democrats are colluding with American neoconservatives to build a “one-world government,” a “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) that would oppress whites and institute “global socialism.” Matt Spaulding of the Heritage Foundation tells listeners that they are the current equivalent of the Revolutionary War-era patriots, and the enemies of America are the “elites” and “progressive liberals” who intend to subvert American democracy. Progressive liberalism, Spaulding says, is an outgrowth of German Nazism. He cites what he calls “Obamacare,” the 2009 health care legislation bitterly opposed by many tea party groups, as an example of the Obama administration’s drive to “socialize” America and undermine constitutional law. At the welcoming ceremony, tea party spokesman Tom Zawistowski, the incoming president of the Ohio Liberty Council, tells the audience that the Obama administration is a “professional army” of socialists intent on overthrowing the Constitution. Zawistowski tells the assemblage that only they, the heirs and successors to American Revolutionary War figures such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, can stop Obama and the “liberal agenda” from destroying America as it currently exists. Vendors sell anti-Obama literature and bumper stickers, along with information on how to purchase weapons engraved with “We the People Convention” and selected phrases from the US Constitution. “[W]e do not hate Obama because he is black,” he says, “we hate him because he is a socialist, fascist, and not American.” While Zawistowski claims that tea parties have no affiliation with Republican politicians, Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots hosts a luncheon where she cautions listeners to avoid voting for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and instead consider voting for another Republican, Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN). [We the People Convention, 7/2011; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 9/16/2011]

John Birch Society logo. [Source: John Birch Society]John F. McManus, the head of the far-right, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS), releases a booklet through the organization entitled “Reality vs. Myth” that attempts to, in the words of the JBS, “set the record straight” about what the organization is and is not. According to McManus, the JBS has never held anti-Semitic or racist views, or tolerated such within its organization. All such assertions come from “enemies” of the organization, often from persons or organizations with Communist affiliations (see March 10, 1961 and 1963), he writes. [John Birch Society, 2011]History of Anti-Communism - The organization was founded in 1958 by candy magnate Robert Welch, a former Massachusetts Republican Party official who began railing about what he considered the “pervasive” influence of Communism in all aspects of American society, particularly in the federal government. Liberals are inherently opposed to freedom and democracy, Welch argued, because liberals are in favor of collectivism/socialism, and therefore are witting or unwitting traitors to the individualist tenets that underlie the US Constitution. The JBS became a vocal opponent of the United Nations, alleging as early as 1959 that the UN intended to establish a “New World Order” (NWO) or “one-world government” (see September 11, 1990). The JBS has also portrayed itself as a fundamentally Christian organization, and views Communism and other non-American forms of government as inherently “godless.” Since the end of World War II, the organization has asserted, the US government has been actively attempting to implement “godless Communism” in place of a Constitutional democracy, including a 1958 claim by Welch that then-President Eisenhower was “a dedicated conscious agent of the communist conspiracy.” Some “Bircher” officials have touted the NWO as being rooted in the alleged Illuminati Freemason conspiracy. In 1964, the JBS enthusiastically supported the presidential candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), though a large number of members supported Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon (R-CA) over Goldwater. The organization opposed John F. Kennedy (D-MA), accusing him of being a traitor and a Communist dupe (see November 1963), accusations it had also leveled against Eisenhower. After Goldwater’s defeat, Welch attempted to land the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace (D-AL), as a standardbearer for the JBS. [Political Research Associates, 2010] McManus insists that the JBS’s overarching loyalty is to the Christian Bible, the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. ” Our organization was created to uphold the truths in the Declaration and the limitations upon government in the Constitution,” he writes. “Not alone in such an endeavor, we welcome all who treasure what our nation’s Founders produced.” [John Birch Society, 2011]Less Overt Racist, Anti-Semitic Stances - During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the JBS painted the civil rights movement as a Communist conspiracy, accusing “ignorant” and “uneducated” African-Americans of either being witting or unwitting dupes of a Communist conspiracy against America. It launched a powerful and well-organized assault on the civil rights movement, calling it a “fraud” and labeling it the “Negro Revolutionary Movement.” Some JBS publications and officials also asserted that the nation’s financial system was controlled largely by Jews with little if any loyalty to the US, and in some instances actively working to undermine and destabilize America’s economy. Such assertions led many to characterize the JBS as a racist and anti-Semitic organization, characterizations that the organization has always disputed. It has touted its very small number of African-American and Jewish members as proof of its claims not to be institutionally racist or anti-Semitic. In 2010, the liberal Political Research Associates (PRA) wrote: “The JBS… discouraged overt displays of racism, while it promoted policies that had the effect of racist oppression by its opposition to the Civil Rights movement. The degree of political racism expressed by the JBS was not ‘extremist’ but similar to that of many mainstream Republican and Democratic elected officials at the time. This level of mainstream racism should not be dismissed lightly, as it was often crude and sometimes violent, treating Black people in particular as second-class citizens, most of whom had limited intelligence and little ambition. In [one JBS publication], Martin Luther King, Jr. is portrayed as an agent of a massive communist conspiracy to agitate among otherwise happy Negroes to foment revolution, or at least promote demands for more collectivist federal government intrusion.” PRA also went on to note that one of its founders, Revilo P. Oliver, was forced to resign from the JBS after making anti-Semitic and racist comments at a 1996 JBS rally. And, the PRA wrote, “When crude antisemitism was detected in JBS members, their membership was revoked[,]” though the organization still held that anti-American Jews were attempting to do damage to the nation’s economy. “At its core, however, the Birch view of the conspiracy does not reveal it to be controlled or significantly influenced by Jews in general, or a secret group of conniving Jews, nor is their evidence of a hidden agenda within the Society to promote suspicion of Jews. The Society always struggled against what it saw as objectionable forms of prejudice against Jews, but it can still be criticized for having continuously promoted mild antisemitic stereotyping. Nevertheless, the JBS was closer to mainstream stereotyping and bigotry than the naked race hate and genocidal antisemitism of neonazi or KKK groups. In a sense, the Birch society pioneered the encoding of implicit cultural forms of ethnocentric White racism and Christian nationalist antisemitism rather than relying on the White supremacist biological determinism and open loathing of Jews that had typified the old right prior to WWII. Throughout its existence, however, the Society has promoted open homophobia and sexism. The Society’s anti-communism and states rights libertarianism was based on sincere principles, but it clearly served as a cover for organizing by segregationists and White supremacists. How much of this was conscious, and how much unconscious, is difficult to determine.” [Political Research Associates, 2010] McManus calls attempts to point out the JBS’s history of implicit racism and anti-Semitism as deliberate, dishonest attempts to “stigmatize” the group, usually by persons and organizations who are working to implement a one-world government and see the JBS as a roadblock to that goal. “There was no evidence that the Society was racist, neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, or subversive of good order,” McManus claims. “But that didn’t stop many from making such charges.… There were some attempts to defend JBS against the flood of vicious characterizations but these were overwhelmed by widespread and undeserved nastiness. No private organization in our nation’s history had ever been treated so unfairly.” He calls efforts to show the JBS as racist “vicious” and false. “If truth were told,” he writes, “the John Birch Society should be congratulated nationally for its important work in diffusing racial animosities.” [John Birch Society, 2011] Many prominent white supremacist leaders used their membership in the JBS to help promote their more overtly racist organizations (see 1970-1974 and 1973). Former Ku Klux Klan leader Johnny Lee Clary has said the JBS “is just a political version of the KKK, without the name of the KKK. They center on the political ideas of the Klan and are not as vocal in public on the ideas of the racial superiority, but they attract the same people and say the same things behind closed doors.… They are racist, and full of hate and are officially listed as a hate group with several civil rights organizations throughout the USA” (see April 13, 2009). Among other non-white leaders, the JBS has labeled South Africa’s Nelson Mandela as a “Communist tyrant” (see December 11, 2009). Reframing Itself - In the late 1970s, the JBS saw its influence waning as more modern organizations comprising what some have called the “New Right” came to the fore. In the 1980s, the JBS lost even more influence after attacking Reagan administration policies. It managed to revive itself by toning down its anti-Communist rhetoric and emphasizing its warnings about the New World Order and positioning itself as a long-time advocate of right-wing, muscularly patriotic popularism. Author and journalist Andrew Reinbach notes that the JBS provided an ideological “seed bank” for many of the tenets currently embraced by the various “tea party” organizations on the right (see February 4-8, 2010 and February 15, 2010), an assertion echoed by conservative journalist Matthew Boyle. [Huffington Post, 9/12/2011; Daily Caller, 11/29/2011] McManus credits the JBS with helping bring about the impeachment of then-President Clinton, stopping the establishment of a free-trade entity in the Western Hemisphere, and putting an end to what it calls “the drive to a sovereignty-compromising North American Union.” McManus says JBS efforts to “educate” the world about the UN has prevented that organization “from becoming the tyrannical world government intended by its founders.” He writes that the JBS successfully thwarted the federal government’s alleged plans to federalize all American law enforcement, and credits the JBS’s black membership with preventing wholesale rioting and insurrection during the Civil Rights Era. He touts the JBS as being one of the primary organizations that blocked the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. And he credits the JBS with being among the first organizations to warn about what it calls the dangers of illegal immigration. He touts the support of, among others, presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX—see 1978-1996 and July 22, 2007) and conservative commentator Pat Buchanan (see June 12, 2009, June 20, 2009, July 16, 2009, and October 18, 2011 and After) as validating the organization’s ideology and positions, and notes that in recent years, the JBS was an official sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference (see April 19, 2010 and February 9-11, 2012). And he claims that attempts to paint tea party organizations as far-right, racist, or homophobic are similar to the efforts by Communists and NWO conspiratists to destroy the Society. He concludes by writing to prospective members: “Don’t allow yourself to be influenced by the false image created by the Society’s enemies. Our country is under attack and The John Birch Society offers a workable plan to combat it.” [John Birch Society, 2011]

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